In This Shattered Globe
by Drucilla
Summary: [LXG] Seven years later, an old threat resurfaces and brings together the remnants of the League (on hiatus till December 1)
1. Prologue

The catacombs were dark, filthy, and smelled of stale water and air that had not moved significantly in years. Moss clung to the wall like the guest that wouldn't go away. There were all manner of unpleasant things swimming around over the ground… rodentia, worms, insects… and the water was brown and saturated with the detritus of the city. During hours of heavy hansom traffic the already dangerously low ceiling shuddered, with bits of plaster falling down and highlighting the risk of collapse. The final touch was the morbid presence of corpses lining the walls, stacked five, six, ten in an alcove.   
  
The collection of well-dressed gentlemen made only one concession to the muck: high leather boots that protected their suits from the water. Otherwise they looked entirely out of place, hunched over and puttering around with lanterns.   
  
"It's hard to believe anyone lives down here," one of the gentleman remarked in a quavering, soft voice.   
  
"Well, they certainly don't do it by choice." The second man's voice was acidic and heavily accented, concealing any emotion he might have felt at what the group had discovered over the past few days. The first gentleman looked intimidated.   
  
"Be quiet, both of you."   
  
There was silence again, punctuated only by the dripping of water from the stones. The three men moved further into the old tunnels, watching for signs of the inhabitants they were told could be found here. They strained their senses, looking around, listening, even sniffing about for any sign they could find. Nothing.   
  
"This is complete nonsense…" the accented voice finally spoke up, irritable. "I say we just…"   
  
"Hush…" interruped his more timid friend. "Listen."   
  
The three men froze.   
  
"I hear it too…" They pelted down the corridors, for the moment giving no thought to where they were or where they were going except that they were going towards the sounds they had heard.   
  
"I didn't hear a bloody thing," the accented man complained, but he was running no less frantically than the others, his hands clenched into tight gloved fists. They skidded around a corner, nearly knocking each other into the water.   
  
And then, suddenly, they were right on top of them. There was screaming, lots of screaming, high pitched and childlike. Clothes flew everywhere, a sword was drawn, and a pipe came down on someone's head as all the lights went out at once. More shouting.   
  
"Dammit, I can't see a bloody thing!"   
  
"Will you be silent!"   
  
The children were screaming, that was all any of the three gentlemen heard. The children were screaming, scared and cold and hungry and terrorized for years. They had been sent down into the catacombs with their heads filled with tales of children brutalized, murdered, manipulated into becoming thieves and young whores by a brutal society of older men and women… how much of it was true they had not yet found out, as none of the older men and women had yet been found. But for now, all they knew was the screaming, and children who needed protecting.   
  
"Light!"   
  
As if in response to the shouted command, a light was struck. Everyone froze and looked around, for the first time able to see who they were fighting.   
  
A girl of perhaps fourteen stood with old iron skillet in hand, looking prepared to swing at anyone who came her way. A young boy who appeared to be her brother was on the other side of the room, defending himself against the gentleman's sword with an iron bar. Three other children who could not have been more than ten stood, similarly armed and bearing cuts and bruises. The rest were cowering in a corner.   
  
."What the bloody hell just happened?" came a voice from thin air. All five armed children jumped, swinging their weapons wildly.   
  
"Mr. Skinner, would you please put some clothes on? They're children, for Godsakes…" The sight of so many boys and girls shivering in cold and terror from their presence seemed to have given audacity to the previously timid man. He crouched down in the muck, which brought him to eye level with the boy. "We're not going to hurt you, lad. We're here to help… get you out of here."   
  
"We were informed that you were being kept prisoner…" the third gentleman, ornately (and oddly, for London) dressed, reached out to the young woman. "Are your captors nearby?"   
  
She shook her head, mute and still on the defensive.   
  
"Oh, for pity's sake, we're not going to hurt you, girl." The voice was moving, and soon the pile of clothes that had been discarded were arranging themselves in the air, as though on a person. All the children gaped.   
  
"Yeah, and how will we be knowing that, mister?" the boy asked.   
  
The strangely dressed man sheathed his sword. "We can give you no assurances other than this: If you come with us, we will find places for you, send you to schools, and see you raised well…"   
  
The expressions on the children's faces were no less scared.   
  
"We'll give you a warm place to sleep, and good food to eat," the soft-spoken gentleman said, looking from the boy to the girl as they seemed to be the leaders. "And we won't…" he trailed off. All of the children bore bruises and cuts on their faces that could not be explained by the fight, and he didn't want to ask where they'd come from.   
  
Tunnel-shaking thumping, and what sounded like a loud roar galvanized them all into action. Invisible arms scooped up the girl with the frying pan, as the soft-voiced gentleman urged the boy down the tunnel from where they'd come. The fancy gentleman began to herd the rest of the children in the same direction, drawing his sword again.   
  
"We don't have much time," came the voice again. "Does anyone remember the way out?"   
  
"Left!" called the swordsman, "And hurry!" 


	2. TallyHo

It was dark, it was late, and Marie had just gotten the last of the children to bed when the knock came at the door. She didn't dare call out to whoever was on the other side for fear of waking the children, but she did scurry down the stairs as fast as she could without making any noise. Over the last two years she had become highly adept at it.  
  
She peeked through the small sliding window into the second floor laboratory, but Henry wasn't there. Neither was Edward. They... he was probably in the library then, and since it seemed as though he hadn't heard the knock he had probably fallen asleep over one of his books. She smiled a little as she bounded down the stairs, thinking affectionately of his tendency to fall asleep curled in the library, and how she would have to cover him with a blanket or rouse him to go to his bed upstairs. It was a good night when she could walk into the library and discover him draped over a chair in front of the fire, book fallen to the floor from limp fingers.   
  
The bad nights, for the most part, didn't bear thinking about. There was of course always the chance that he wasn't in the house at all, that he was outdoors engaging in other, less savory pursuits. But then, he rarely knocked when he returned from the bad nights, and a policeman would have been neither so quiet nor so patient.   
  
She pulled open the heavy inner door with a bit of effort, not seeing who was on the other side till she had pulled the latch to unlock the outer door and called quietly "It's open."  
  
The door opened. A tall, long-bearded man dressed in an elaborate uniform stood on the other side, sheltered from the light rain beneath an umbrella. She smiled.  
  
"Captain!" she said, happily but still quietly. She darted forward and opened the barred door that closed off the foyer to the outside, leading him through the second and third doorways and closing them all diligently behind her. He left his umbrella to drip in the hallway and hugged her with paternal relief when they were safely inside.  
  
"It is good to see you again, and in such good health and spirits," he murmured, well aware of the number of children who slept upstairs. "Is Henry at home, or Edward?"  
  
"Henry," she smiled shyly, and hoped it was true. "He's in the library..."   
  
She led the way into the small but well-stocked ground-floor library, holding her breath at the threshold and the sudden thought that perhaps she had assumed wrong. Nevertheless, there was indeed a slender (almost wraithlike, she thought with a worried sigh) form stretched out in one of the chairs, book on the floor by his side.   
  
Marie knelt down and picked up the book, touching the man's arm. "Henry..." she whispered. "Henry?"  
  
He came awake with a start and a small cry; he always did. "No... no!" Then he looked around and realized where he was. Calmly, as though this sort of thing happened to all of his friends, the bearded gentleman sat in the chair opposite and waited patiently. The slender man looked at him, looked at Marie.   
  
"Captain's here..." she said, smiling, then stood and replaced the book. The man sat up in his chair, blinking a little bit as he came more rapidly to wakefulness.  
  
"Captain..." he nodded, smiling a little.  
  
"Henry." The bearded Captain did not smile, but still somehow managed to convey the impression that he was very pleased to see his friend. "It is good to see you and Marie doing so well."  
  
"We've had some recent successes in placing children," he murmured, watching with a little worry, a little reluctance as Marie dragged a footstool over and knelt down on it beside his chair. The Captain also glanced briefly over with a similar look of worry, but neither made comment. "Word of our enterprise is starting to reach the ears of couples who not only have a willingness but also have a means to take one or more of our children. It is beginning to come to light that this is a rather... extraordinary... sort of place."   
  
A small chuckle wended its way through the room at the emphasis on the adjective. "And meanwhile you continue to do well by funds and other necessities...?" the Captain asked. It was a delicate way of asking if they needed money.   
  
Henry nodded. 'We are managing. It helps that we have at the moment less mouths to feed than we might otherwise. We are in that delicate point between obscurity and notoriety where we are able to use our good name to place the children, but are not yet a household word to attract the presence of new orphans."  
  
The Captain nodded, looking pleased. "Percy is well," he added, more to Marie than to Henry, and she looked delighted by the news. "The career of a sailor... perhaps less honest of a sailor than some might hope, but still an honorable career... seems to be agreeing with him, and he has earned the respect of many of the crew. He may well come away from the association with his own ship, or a commission in the navy." He didn't, of course, specify which country's navy.  
  
"Where is Percy?" the young woman asked in her soft, hesitant voice. She was sitting up a little straighter, anxious to see the boy who had been claimed as her younger brother.  
  
"With Tom, and Mr. Skinner. They are coming here by automobile, having had to stop at the Consulate and the Special Branch offices on the way. There is news from Paris..."   
  
Marie held her breath, and Henry narrowed his eyes and paled just slightly. There was something in the Captain's tone that made them both flinch. "News?" Henry said, and his voice was still even and steady.  
  
"I think it would be best if we were all here for the news," the Captain said, sighing and regretting that he had let the word slip. "It is both better and worse than we could have hoped, and no one is sure what to do. Unless orders come down from either Special Branch, or through the American Consulate, there is nothing to be done. I..."  
  
There was a loud knock at the door, startling everyone in the room. The Captain and Henry exchanged a look, and Henry moved out to the heavy oak door. Even they could hear Tom calling from outside. "The storm's gotten worse... Skinner and Percy are on their way, but they'll probably get held up until it stops raining." They didn't hear Henry's reply, but the doors began to open and close, and after a few minutes he escorted a dripping Tom Sawyer into the library, followed closely by an equally drenched young man of about the same age. Marie looked inquisitively from Henry to the new young man.   
  
"Nemo, are you sure your automobile will be all right?" Sawyer and his friend immediately made for the fire.   
  
"It is built to withstand the rain, and I have covered it with a canvas nonetheless," the Captain said as Henry reseated himself by Marie. "It will be all right."  
  
Tom nodded, leaned over to gingerly give Marie a hug. "Sorry about this, it's really pouring outside." She giggled, and didn't seem to mind that he got her soaked from throat to thighs. He let her go and moved back towards the fire. "It's worse than we thought, Nemo. Special Branch has information on two cities that you don't know about, and..."  
  
Henry coughed a little, to get the American's attention, and shook his head.   
  
"... Skinner's bringing the rest of the information," Tom hastily temporized. "Meantime, we've got Huck to help us out." He clapped the other man on the shoulder, who rolled his eyes with the look of someone who was long familiar with Tom Sawyer's madcap plans.   
  
"Huck Finn, at your service, sirs..." he shook hands gravely with Nemo and Henry. "Lady," smiled winsomely at Marie, who smiled back. "The State Department gave me special dispensation to come over and help out in any way I could."  
  
There was an awkward silence as the three old friends and the newcomer looked at each other, trying find something to talk about that didn't involve the urgent business that had so clearly brought them together. Marie watched them all with eyes that were intelligent yet still childlike, as though she knew they wanted her out of the room but wanted to wait. After a few minutes Tom finally moved over to her, taking her hands in his and pulling her to her feet.   
  
"Come on, Marie. You'd better get to bed, too. We'll tell you when Skinner and Percy get here."  
  
"All right," she sighed, standing and going around the room to hug everyone in turn. They gave her their goodnights with affection and a smile, and Nemo kissed her forehead and murmured a fatherly blessing. She smiled, and allowed Tom to escort her up to bed.  
  
"She is not recovering as well as you hoped," Nemo said. It was almost a question but not quite; they could all see her subservient behavior, her timidity and her lingering fear.   
  
Henry sighed. "She is speaking, interacting with the children, the men and women who come to adopt, or to finance our little organization. But she is terrified of leaving the grounds without an escort, someone whom she sees as a protector. She will literally stand trembling on the doorstep and not move."  
  
"Well that makes it rather hard to get out then, don't it?"   
  
Everyone jumped, but only Huck looked around with any degree of frantic concern. The reactions of the rest were somewhere between mild amusement and wry annoyance. As they all watched patiently a form began to pull itself together out of thin air... or rather, to pull on clothing and shape itself into a humanoid form. A jar opened, cream seemed to spread itself on fingers and a surface above the coat, which resolved eventually into a face. Huck gaped openly.  
  
"There, now, I imagine that's much better for the new tag-along." The latest arrival leaned himself against a wall and folded his arms over his chest, white makeup covering lips that were stretched into a smirk. Behind him Percy could briefly be seen, dashing upstairs as though he knew exactly where Marie had gone.  
  
"You're late," Henry said calmly to the painted man. "Marie wanted to see you before she went to bed."  
  
The smirk fell, replaced by a look of resigned disappointment. "Sorry."  
  
"Well. I know that each of us has different information pertaining to the troubles at hand. I suggest that we take it in turns to describe what we have uncovered in our investigations." Captain Nemo brushed along overtop of the invisible man's chagrin. "In answer to your earlier questions, Henry... this is about the same phenomenon that we experienced in France seven years ago. The rumors have in fact been substantiated. Children have been disappearing, on certain occasions turning up in the ditches and drains of the city so traumatized that they cannot or will not speak. In some cases they have been found dead." Although the word was spoken bluntly enough, each member of the League winced noticeably. "So far the phenomenon has been observed in Paris, in Berlin, London and two other locales in Great Britain... most notably, thus far, in Venice."   
  
"It's been showing up in the States, too." Tom said, pushing off of the wall where he had been standing and starting to pace. "Our two biggest cities, New York and Chicago... both are starting to see the same kind of thing, only it's harder to tell. Especially in New York, where there are always immigrants coming in on Ellis Island, it's hard to tell if a kid's just moved on with his folks or disappeared. Because of that, we've been digging more into the places where the few kids that we pick up have been found."   
  
Huck tossed a couple of glass slides onto the table. "Miss Harker's been working on the samples we've found, but so far she's never seen anything like it. Even with all your... differences." He looked around the room, and spoke delicately.   
  
"You mean even with all of us being self-inflicted freaks of nature," said the white face.   
  
"Rodney..." Nemo warned, and the man subsided again.   
  
"The situation is more grave than we had imagined," the Captain continued. "There are two likely possibilities at the moment. One, that it was as widespread in the beginning as it seems to be today, and we were only informed about Paris. Two, that after our foray into the catacombs the parties carrying out this malfeasance extended their operation, for reasons we do not yet understand."  
  
"Or three, there are two groups of nuts abducting children and carrying them down into the sewers." This time no one contradicted the invisible man, and Nemo grimaced.  
  
"Yes. That is a third possibility, although less likely."  
  
'Bloody hell."  
  
"Yes."  
  
They were all silent for a little while, digesting the news of their new charge. It was disheartening to realize that they had not ended the threat years ago, to say the very least. Worse, they were all very much aware of the resources they had now, the new sources of information of which they had not been possessed in the past.   
  
Marie Harker would be twenty one next spring, although it was largely an arbitrary birthday. She didn't know her real birthday, her real name, having been abducted from her cradle and raised in filth and terror for many years. Next spring her birthday would be the anniversary, really, of her rebirth into the aboveground and more normal world, the anniversary of her rescue. Marie had been her own choice of name, and she had been adopted by one of her rescuers. They had all had a hand in the remainder of her upbringing, and if one or another League member particularly took an interest in her, no one made mention of it.  
  
Percy, the second oldest of the children and the only other to remain in custody of the League, was crewing aboard the Nautilus. Somehow he had come out of the ordeal less scarred, less terrified than Marie, but like his adoptive sister he refused to talk to anyone about what had happened in the catacombs. Whenever the Nautilus returned he would visit Marie, but everyone was under the impression that they didn't speak of the night terrors even amongst themselves. Percy was ordinarily a cheerful, healthy-seeming young man, but the merest mention of what had happened seven years ago caused his eyes to darken and his lips to tighten into a thin line of silence.  
  
The rest of the children were scattered to the four winds, safely ensconced in their adoptive homes. No one wanted to press the two League youngers into speaking, and everyone knew they would have to.   
  
"Even if we can reassure or persuade them to tell us what happened, who these mysterious underground dwellers are... how can we take on multiple cities at once?" Henry spoke up finally. "We are a league, not an army. And if the samples taken are as unusual as you indicate, Tom, does anyone really thing the local constabulary could deal with the situation by themselves?"  
  
"Well, that's where we come in," Huck stepped away from the wall, speaking up finally. "The State Department's been talking to your Special Branch ever since this whole thing started up again. When Tom told me about you... gentlemen."  
  
The invisible man smothered a laugh.  
  
"... he mentioned," Huck continued with a nervous glance to Skinner's corner. "He mentioned each of you, your... individual talents. One thing led to another... we..."  
  
"Hey, it was my idea, but you did all the talking."  
  
"We persuaded the State Department to go looking for our own set of ... talents. The short end of it is, we're going to have help." Huck shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched over, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  
  
The rest of the League stared at the two Americans with varying degrees of consternation and amusement. Eventually it was Nemo who spoke up. "And how many of these others have you recruited?"  
  
"Well... none, yet. There hasn't been anything that would force our government to recruit. But this qualifies, and we've been given the rank and resources to get the help we need. We have gathered a lot of information on some possibilities..."  
  
"And what are some of these possibilities?" The invisible man's voice was growing a little less hostile, but his shoulders were hunched and his hands were jammed into his pockets. He hadn't liked the news from the beginning, and he was liking the reasonable course of action even less.   
  
"Well... there's a scientist who's been carrying out some experiments that everyone says are bogus, but we had some people take a look at some of his research independently and it looks sound..." Henry shuddered. "There are rumors of a man in Paris..."  
  
He pulled a sheaf of papers out of a satchel at his side, and with Tom's help they spread it over the table in the center of the library. Nemo and Henry leaned over the table with them, studying the documents and making comments here and there as to the helpfulness of the new potentials. Skinner leaned against his wall with his hands shoved into his pockets, silent but fortunately somewhat visible. In the end they had the list pared down to seven names, scattered across the globe. The symmetry of it all was not lost on the company.   
  
"Well... if we can place two League members at each site..." Henry speculated finally, pinching the top of his nose with his fingers and squinting as though it would make the letters on the pages any less blurry. "We should be able to affect the outcome favorably..."  
  
"We're going to need more people than that," Skinner muttered. "We're going to need at least six or seven more."  
  
"Perhaps if the local constabulary..." Nemo frowned, moving across the table to the list, and they were off again.  
  
"Are you sure we can trust policemen to this sort of work?" was Henry's first objection.  
  
"Thanks," Tom said wryly, and the doctor winced   
  
"I meant... er..." Henry subsided, and Huck elbowed his friend.  
  
"Ordinary policemen, no, but these will be hand-picked by those who know about your abilities. I've already got a list of some people who might be helpful..."  
  
"... you and your lists." Tom rolled his eyes.  
  
"... in the States." Huck continued, unperturbed. "You might want to consult Special Branch as well. I'm sure they have some recommendations."  
  
Nemo nodded, perhaps a second longer than he might have had he been more alert. They were all exhausted, physically and mentally. "We have a little time before Mina returns with the results of her..." he searched for the word that briefly eluded him. "Research."  
  
"Perhaps we can use the time to ask the children what happened..." Henry sighed heavily. "And I haven't the faintest notion of how to go about it..."  
  
"Carefully," Skinner said in acerbic tones that betrayed his worry. "She's had her whole world turned upside down on her, twice now. She went from the most hideous kind of life we can imagine to one that probably seems like heaven to her in comparison. She's not going to want to go back to her old life, even just to talk about it."  
  
"We know, Skinner," Nemo said with the impatience of the very tired. "We realize..."  
  
"No, mate, I don't think you do realize. That girl grew up in filth, starving, cold, and beaten. She's got scars on her from tortures you would never dream of. She's had pieces of her stripped away, so has Percy. The things they've been through even both of you would shudder at." He looked at Henry when he said it and the doctor shuddered, knowing exactly what Skinner meant by both of him.   
  
"What in blazes are you talking about..." Nemo snapped with less grace than usual. Huck and Tom backed away from him almost in unison.  
  
Skinner sighed. Of everyone in the League, he was probably the closest to knowing the kind of life Marie and Percy had had, and even he was a far cry from it. The problem was, no one else in the League realized... no one had wanted to ask until now. "She's got the kind of hands that have been broken, repeatedly, in places where you can't splint it, you just have to let it heal on its own. That's why her fingers don't bend quite right. She flinches when you brush her hair because she's used to being pulled by it, and now her head's all sensitive. The bottoms of her feet are calloused from being burned... scalded, more like. She's got burn marks on her back and shoulders, too... I don't know what from..."  
  
"Acid..." Henry murmured, looking horrified. "I never guessed..."  
  
Skinner shrugged. "She creeps past doorways like she thinks she'll be beaten if she makes too much noise. She's gotten very good at staying quiet... sneaking around. She's probably got a stash of food upstairs, despite the fact that there's a perfectly good kitchen. Percy's probably done the same thing..."  
  
The Captain nodded ever so slightly, looking disturbed, worried. Suddenly a number of behaviors in his protégé were starting to become clear and explained, and he didn't like what Skinner was implying. He was also just a little disconcerted by the fact that it was Skinner who had noticed all this and, further, who had deciphered what it meant.   
  
"There's more," the invisible man finished, looking down at the floor and shoving his hands back into his pockets, knowing the other men wouldn't want to hear it. "But you probably don't want to hear it. I don't think you have to worry about Percy... But Marie..." There was no delicate way to say it. "The way she acts around the children, the really little ones.... She's had a child before. Before we knew her..."  
  
All four gentleman stared at him, horrified. "She was fourteen!" Tom choked out.  
  
"That don't make any difference, mate," Skinner told him. "There are fourteen year old whores on the streets a mile from here, in Spitalfields. And I'd give you good odds that some of them have children... and the rest have diseases."  
  
Huck looked as though he was going to be sick. "How.... Who..."  
  
Skinner shrugged again. "I don't know. I just know what I've seen... what I've seen her do."   
  
That pretty much ended the conversation there. The rest of the League stared at each other for several minutes, Huck and Tom sliding their gazes away when they thought Skinner might meet their eyes, Henry pausing after a few minutes and looking away from everyone with a shudder. Nemo stood with his hands on the table, leaning slightly forward, lost in his own dark wondering. Skinner stood at the center of it all hunched in on himself in a position eerily reminiscent of Marie's usual posture. The Americans were the first two to leave, slipping back into the darkness and the rain with their heads bowed.   
  
"You'll send Percy over, I hope?" Henry asked the Captain at last. His voice was hoarse and ragged.  
  
"Of course." Nemo replied, but his thoughts weren't in the present, his attention elsewhere. "Marie would never forgive me if I whisked him through without allowing her to see him again." He left quietly, without further word.  
  
"I'll stay the night here, if you don't mind," Skinner said at last. "Probably talk to Marie when she wakes up in the morning. The more friendly faces around ... not that it matters in my case, but... the easier it'll be."  
  
Henry nodded, staring into the fire with a faraway look of horror. "Of course..."  
  
Skinner walked over and put a hand on Henry's shoulder, sighing. "It's not your fault, mate. You did the best you could. We all did."  
  
"I should have guessed," he said, still in the same broken tones. "I should have known. What other use can there possibly be for having a monster within oneself, if not to be aware of the horrors in the world..."  
  
Skinner was quiet for a little while, gripping the other man's shoulder as though he could force out the nightmares Henry was surely going to have. "Maybe there are some things even Hyde doesn't want to think about," he murmured, and left.   
  
Henry stared at the fire, at his alter ego's confirming nod within the flames.   
  
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Marie woke up from dreams of being hunted, being wet, being hungry to a sensation of sunlight and warm covers over her, a soft bed underneath her. No matter how many times she made the transition it was still a shock. She lay there for a couple of seconds to be sure she wasn't dreaming. Then, finally, she sat up and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Percy had been by sometime in the night, she remembered that, but then he'd been gone again and the nightmares had returned. At least she'd had some rest.  
  
The windows were open and the air was clear, the sun out. Which meant that sometime in the night the storm had passed on. There was that clear scent in the air of leaves soaked in rain, as though the entire world had been thoroughly washed and made clean again. She could even hear a bird singing, no doubt rebuilding its nest from the damages it had sustained the night before. The sunlight through her window was still pale, telling her that it was still early in the morning. The curtains whispered in the breeze, moving lazily around the shape of a human hand that had no shadow on the floor.  
  
"Rodney!"   
  
Her delighted cry and subsequent leap out of bed caused the invisible man to turn and chuckle. He stopped playing with her curtains and caught her in a hug and a whirl. "Hey there, darling. Sleep well?"  
  
She nodded, touching his face in a gesture that had been repeated so often it was casual, habit, not thought on by either of them. Having ascertained just where he was, feeling him out rather like a blind person might have, she kissed his cheek. "Everyone here?"  
  
He nodded, and she felt the movement in the hand she kept pressed to the side of his face. "Including the new kid Tom brought in. It's getting so that anyone can join the club these days." She felt him scowl, felt him chuckle almost before she heard it, and grinned back.  
  
"'s what you get," she told him, and they finished together. "Bloody Americans!"  
  
He laughed and set her down. "Mrs. Spencer is fixing breakfast... although... hey!" She was poking her hands into his coat pockets.  
  
"No chocolate?"  
  
"Not before breakfast!"  
  
She pouted.   
  
"Oh, stop that, Marie, you look like one of your children." Skinner chuckled, and pulled a piece of candy out of a more hidden pocket. "The rest will have to wait until after you've sent them to lessons. Wouldn't do to set a bad example." He tapped a finger to the point of her nose in admonishment, and she giggled.   
  
"Of course..." She moved over to her wardrobe, and Skinner turned his back out of politeness, although the oriental screen (a gift from Nemo, no doubt) made it rather unnecessary.   
  
"You probably won't be seeing much of Nemo and the Americans till noon, or later," he told her as she dressed. "Everyone was up fairly late last night, talking about the latest League business. Not that we really came up with a plan, but at least everyone knows what's going on now."  
  
"What's that?"   
  
There was a brief silence. "Someone's trying to stir something up in a number of countries again. We're not sure who, or why yet. Tom thinks we need more people, and Henry and the Captain seem to agree, so they've put together a list. Mina's on her way in, too, as soon as she's done experimenting on whatever it is she's been experimenting on."  
  
"Good." There was a definite note of satisfaction in her voice. She saw all too little of her adopted mother lately. "Lace me up?"  
  
For a man who, at best, had been a respectable bachelor all his life (although Marie knew him better than to assume any sort of respectability) he laced her corset up as deftly as any other woman might have. She'd always wondered about that but had never really found an appropriate time to ask. Instead she settled for reaching up, finding and kissing his cheek again, and disappeared back behind the screen.  
  
"Where's Percy?"  
  
Skinner turned his back again. "The storm last night upset everyone's plans a little... he had to return Nemo's spare automobile to the ship. He'll be by sometime today, don't worry."  
  
She came out from behind the screen, immaculately dressed and beaming. "Perfect," she said, although it wasn't entirely sure whether she was referring to her morning ablutions or Percy's arrival. Either way. Skinner chuckled and extended his arm like a true gentleman, and they made their way downstairs.   
  
"Captain," Marie bobbed a curtsey to the man as she greeted him in the tiny kitchen that served mainly herself and Henry. He smiled and made her a little bow.   
  
"Marie. I trust you slept well? This scoundrel did not abuse your sensibilities in any way?" The twinkle in his eye as he winked at Skinner turned the words from rebuke (which once, long ago, they might have been) into jest.   
  
"Oh, scoundrel, eh? Abuse? I see how this is," Skinner pretended to be offended and went over to the cupboard to rummage through it for something to eat. "Grumble grumble. A man gets no respect around here..." Marie giggled as he actually said, grumble grumble.  
  
"Percy?" Marie asked again, her 'brother' never being far from her mind.  
  
"Right behind you."   
  
She turned at the sound of his voice, and the Captain had to be quick to back out of her way as she leaped at Percy with the same enthusiasm she'd displayed earlier in the morning. Her younger 'brother,' now grown taller than she was, caught her with a delighted laugh and spun her around in the kitchen, though there was barely room for them. They giggled, burbling to each other in their own secret language the League members hadn't been able to decipher or understand.   
  
"This is probably going to go on for some time," Nemo murmured to Skinner.   
  
"About five minutes for every month they've been apart."  
  
"Shall we adjourn to the library?"  
  
"My thoughts exactly."  
  
They made their way past the giggling youngers, each seeming to try and out-do the other for speed and rapidity of gestures as they talked. "It's amazing they manage to communicate anything at all," Skinner commented wryly as they entered the comparative quiet of the library. Henry looked up from the maps as they entered.  
  
"Percy?"  
  
Nemo nodded. If Skinner nodded too, no one saw it. "They were most pleased to be reunited."  
  
"Mate, you've a gift for understatement. If Marie had had any more distance she'd've bowled the poor boy over."   
  
Henry chuckled. "It seems unfair to them somehow that we have to keep them apart for so much of the time. Nemo, are you sure you couldn't contrive to leave him here?"  
  
"It would be unfair to both of them if we were to keep them from the lives they wish to lead," the Captain reminded Henry gently. "And besides, neither of them seems to be overly suffering from the length of each other's absence. The most important thing is that they are together, here, now, when we will have to ask questions of them that will be very difficult to answer. Given the gravity of the situation I would suggest that we attempt to do so tonight..."   
  
Skinner turned around from where he had been perusing some volumes of fiction that were most probably Marie's, since he didn't think Henry was inclined towards Austen or the Bronte sisters. "You can't be serious..."  
  
"This is a most serious business, Mr. Skinner. I am indeed..." Nemo frowned, not entirely sure why Skinner was objecting.  
  
"He's just gotten off the bloody boat, Nemo! Give them some time together, to catch up or get settled or ... whatever, all right? Give them some time before you start bringing back all the old ghosts."   
  
Henry and Nemo both stared at the invisible man, who seemed more agitated than he normally let on. "Skinner, you are a fraud," the doctor said after a few minutes. "You pretend to be an inveterate rake, but in truth you have a softer heart than you would like to admit."  
  
The invisible man shrugged. "Never denied it... well, not after the first ten times anyway. I mean it, Nemo. No questions at least until Mina gets here. Those poor kids are going to need all the help they can get."  
  
Nemo sighed, giving in. He hadn't been particularly eager to question the two anyway, having within him some remaining shred of innocence that still wished to believe the world was not so cruel. "All right. Until Mina arrives, but no later. We cannot afford to let other children suffer because of our sentiment for these particular two."  
  
"Agreed."   
  
Skinner shrugged, and they stood around in silence for a little while. Finally Henry poured them all a scotch, and for once no one objected (not that Skinner ever turned down a good scotch). They drank in silence, each of them lost in the speculations of a horror they had thought long over. 


	3. Old Friends

... and I believe that the origin of these skin samples may not be animal but, in fact, human...  
  
Mina Harker pulled her glasses off and tugged lightly at the bridge of her nose, frowning in concentration. She didn't want to look at the clock for fear that knowing exactly how late it was would make her too exhausted to work, although she suspected that she had reached that point at the last paragraph. She pulled her journal back to her and scanned the latest entry for coherency, then realized that in her current state if it made no sense she wasn't likely to be able to tell.   
  
Mina had been up for the better part of the evening studying the collection of specimens, samples, and data that the Pinkertons and the Marshals in the United States had managed to gather. It was, admittedly, a far greater data-store than any facility in Europe had been able to gather, and yet it was more puzzling to the scientific eye and mind. It was as though the more information they gathered, the less likely they were to comprehend the whole picture. And it would have been infuriating enough for a scientific sense of curiosity like Mina's, but when there were children involved it made everything that much more urgent, and that much worse.  
  
At least she had the latest news that Nemo and the others discovered, almost the very same day they discovered it. She had been given a portable telegraph unit and taught to interpret the Morse code that came down the line, and while she dreaded every message that began something like "Hello my freaky darling..." she relished the break in the monotony, and whatever news the telegraph brought.   
  
"Miss Harker..."  
  
"Yes?" She looked up, annoyed at the interruption. Although she had been given a luxurious apartment with room both for living quarters and a well-appointed personal laboratory, she had also been required to submit to a pair of bodyguards, US Marshals outside her door. At least they were normally unobtrusive.   
  
"You asked us to tell you when it was four o'clock in the morning...?"   
  
Oh... right. She smiled slightly, remembering the puzzled expression on the man's face when she had made the request. From the look of him now he was understanding why she had. She, herself, was all too aware of her tendency to lose track of time, no matter how many grandfather clocks were installed in her lab.   
  
"Yes... thank you, Smith," she smiled appreciatively at the man, who grinned back in a very young way that reminded her of Sawyer when they had first met. At least, she thought with a sigh, most men improved with age.   
  
Mina scribbled a few quick notes in the back of her journal, made sure to turn off, cap, or shut up everything in the lab in its proper place. As tired as she was, she was very aware that a lapse in habit now could be fatal later. When everything was put away, only then did she dismiss the guard, turn down the lamps, and follow him out. Yawning the whole way to her room, she went through the motions of changing for bed automatically, as a sleep walker.  
  
As tired as she was, though, she couldn't seem to get to sleep once she had finally crawled into bed. Her thoughts kept swirling around in her head, nagging problems that wouldn't go away. The potential uses of the skin samples, the possible sources. And there were the other samples too, not skin, but bone and tooth and claw. Where had those come from? Worst of all, there was something in the samples that was suspiciously human, although no human... even in the League... possessed phosphorescent skin.   
  
Mina stared at the ceiling. The few children who had returned had been so traumatized that none of them would speak at all, much less of the terrors they had endured. The vast majority of them wouldn't even acknowledge the presence of another person in the room. The investigators, both Marshals and the privately owned Pinkertons, had been forced to deduce what had happened from what terrified the children most, a clumsy approach at best and downright sadistic at worst. The most disturbing findings, though, had come from the (thankfully few) bodies that had turned up.  
  
She shuddered as she thought of the autopsy results. Fourteen, fifteen year old girls who had show signs of pregnancy... multiple pregnancy, in one case. Boys that showed signs of backbreaking labor, rock dust under their fingernails and ribs showing through their sides. Callused feet with pieces of glass, iron, lead in the soles. Scars from claws and teeth on places she didn't want to think about because of the implications. Burns from scalding, broken and badly mended limbs, fused and dislocated spines, all signs of hideous and long-term abuse.  
  
The worst thoughts came just as Mina was drifting off to sleep... thoughts of her own two charges, the children of the League. It explained so much about them as well; their near-perfect silence for the first year, the many scars and broken bones. Was this what Marie and Percy had endured for fourteen, ten years? Was this the sort of environment they had grown up in?   
  
It explained at least why they had taken the strange natures of herself, Henry, and Skinner in stride. After all, what threat was there in an invisible man if he didn't beat them or torture them? Hyde was only a danger without Jekyll, and even then she wasn't entirely sure... something in her long association with the man... both men... had given her the impression that there were still certain things Edward wouldn't do. Compared to the horrors the children had endured for the first decade of their lives, the strange habits of the League must have seemed normal to them. Then again, could they ever really have the same idea of what was normal as any average human being?  
  
The images chased themselves around and around in her head, torturing her long after she had fallen asleep.  
  
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Across the Atlantic, similar thoughts were having their effect on the old Indian captain of a unique and fearsome vessel. All those tons of steel, of machinery, and they still couldn't keep one boy entirely safe from his own nightmares. Skinner's words, though Nemo would have swallowed live fish before he would have admitted it, had cut deeply into the captain's soul. He suspected he would be suffering from his own set of nightmares before long; nightmares that had very little to do with the current case.  
  
He watched as young Percy chatted amiably with the other members of the crew, showing no sign of discomfort or unease. And, really, why should he? No one in the League had told either child that their old aggressors had resurfaced. The young man only knew that something was amiss in Paris, and even Marie had likely not managed to piece Tom's unhappily revealed information with the whole. The two of them remained blissfully ignorant of what was to come. Nemo wondered what the boy's reaction would be when he was finally told. He wondered if the boy would handle it well. Then again, Nemo also wondered if he himself would be able to handle it well.  
  
So many years, and he still had not yet mastered the art of remaining distant from those he must care for, work with, and protect. He felt so keenly the urge to protect the boy, to shield him from anything that might terrorize or threaten him. He felt other things stirring too, old feelings long repressed, now rising to the surface more rebellious and unbidden than before. Not that it mattered. Not that he would let any of it show in his face, his words, or his actions. He had to be the Captain of the Nautilus, above reproach and above fraternization with any of his crew.   
  
But sometimes it was so very, very hard.   
  
Nemo walked past the crew, smiling and nodding to them all and giving what words of encouragement he could find in so black a mood. Percy looked up at him with such youthful brightness that the aged Captain almost felt his heart stop. He somehow managed to smile back.  
  
"Did you enjoy your visit with Marie?" he asked after a few seconds of trying to force words from his throat. Percy, sensing a conversation imminent, followed Nemo a short distance down the corridor.   
  
"I did, sir." Percy walked with his hands clasped behind his back, almost in a very military position. A very English military position; nothing he had learned on the ship. Nemo wondered briefly where he had picked that up from. "Thank you for allowing me to come along."  
  
"It was not a question of allowing. Family is important, young Harker, and should come above all else. You know that."   
  
The young man looked up at him with a quizzical stare that Nemo couldn't quite interpret. Part of the stare, at least, was to rebuke his Captain for telling the boy what he did indeed already know. Percy and Marie had come to them clinging to each other, and to their charges, and had since displayed the sort of connection and sense of family ties and values that would have made even Nemo's own demanding parents proud. There was no need, Nemo thought wryly, to have reminded him of the importance of family members. Yet part of the stare was something entirely different, and he was at a loss to identify what it was.  
  
"Yes, sir."   
  
Nemo stopped in the hallway and stared at him, finally piqued enough to ask. "Was there something, Mr. Harker?"  
  
Percy smiled, and for a second it almost seemed as though he were trying to talk to Nemo in his child's dialect. The Captain shook his head just imperceptibly, and the moment passed. "Sir, you are all our family. You, Miss Mina, Henry... everyone. You are all our fathers and mothers. And as you said before, sir... family comes above everything."  
  
With those cryptic words, Percy bowed slightly and returned to his duties, and Nemo stared after the young man as he retreated down the hallway. He had no idea what to make of that statement, although it had raised conflicting impulses in his mind. Granted, he had been under the impression for a long time that although Mina had adopted the two children in the eyes of the law, they had all in a sense adopted them... the entire League. And yet...  
  
Nemo shook off the strange thoughts and feelings. He had other, more pressing matters to attend to, and while most of them would involve the puzzling pair they would not involve anyone's perceptions of each other. He pushed the door open to his rooms...  
  
"Hello, Dakkar."  
  
... and froze in absolute shock.  
  
"Close the door, will you? It wouldn't do to have us having this conversation in the hallway for everyone in your crew to see and hear."  
  
The Captain stepped into his rooms and slowly closed the door, staring at the robed stranger with the graying hair who was kneeling before his small altar, smiling. "I hadn't expected to see you here so soon," he said, stalling for time to gather his wits and his thoughts.  
  
"It's been a year and a day, as promised. I was wondering if you had given any further thought to my proposal, or come to any sort of conclusion as to what you might do about it?"  
  
"Now?" Nemo asked, his indignant tone only partially feigned. It seemed particularly unfair of the man to show up here, now, when they were in the middle of what could well be a long-term campaign. Even worse, when they were in the midst of a possible internal crisis dealing with the youngest of the League members and charges. How, a small and petulant voice wondered in the back of Nemo's mind, how could he be expected to make such momentous decisions in the middle of an all-encompassing crisis?   
  
"What better time?" the older man smiled, spreading his hands wide and shrugging, his manner entirely benevolent, calm, and at his ease. "You are at a crossroads, why not consider another fork, another alternative to the paths before you?"  
  
"I have enough alternatives," Nemo snapped in an uncharacteristic display of temper. "I do not need one more." I do not, he thought to himself, need to be reminded of my obligations. I am more fully aware of them than I would like.   
  
He was also fully aware that he was being almost childish, and he resented that impulse within himself. And yet, here stood a man more powerful than any he had ever encountered, who was most likely not a man in fact at all. And he was asking, calmly and with a smile on his face but asking it nonetheless, to take away from Nemo everything that the Indian prince held dear.   
  
"Yet you have it, the obligation as per our agreement, and whether you like it or no you have to at least consider my debt owing from you and choose one of the options presented. It need not be as burdensome as you think."  
  
Nemo took a deep breath. "I have considered the options you presented to me. I have not yet chosen by which means I will repay my debt, but your proposal would be intriguing, if..."  
  
"... if your precious children were not in danger?" The words could have very easily been made sarcastic, ironic, and yet they were delivered with a knowing sort of kindness that relaxed the captain and set him at his ease. "I know more of your situation than you might think, Dakkar, and I am not unsympathetic to your needs. Our bargain was that you choose the manner of your repayment within three years and three days, and I have presented you with a number of options to choose from."  
  
"I know the terms of our bargain," Nemo snapped again, losing the little patience he had gained and beginning to pace up and down, agitated beyond reason. "I know what I must do. I simply..." He took a deep breath, uncertain how to phrase it. "This... is not a good time."  
  
"Is there ever a good time for good-byes?" the older man said, smiling slightly. "I agree that this might be a worse time than most, but a bargain was struck. You know the consequences if you ..." He trailed off at the look on the Captain's face: stricken, and self-recriminating.   
  
"I know the terms of our bargain," Nemo repeated. "I will have an answer for you upon the conclusion of our current assignment."   
  
The older man put a hand on the captain's shoulder, a reassuring gesture before he turned to leave. "You might find the choice easier to make than you think," he said, although he didn't explain the statement. Not that he ever explained anything he did. Men such as the captain's unexpected visitor never explained their actions and, really, were never required to. Nemo stared at the floor as the door creaked open, the footsteps started out.  
  
"Krishna..."  
  
The older man turned and stared at the captain with a penetrating gaze as blue as lightning. "Yes?"  
  
Nemo opened his mouth to say something. Anything. As had happened a year ago, two years ago, when Percy had lay in his arms dying, he couldn't think of anything to say.   
  
"I'll see you in a year and a day," the older man smiled kindly, and left.  
  
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Mina woke to sunlight so diffuse and cheerful that it contrasted wildly with her dreams of shadows and pitch-black darkness; it made her blink, bemused. At first she had forgotten entirely where she was, and it was only when she could focus and had looked around the room that she remembered. America. The laboratory. She shook her head. It was a bad night when she woke up with that extreme a feeling of alienation.   
  
She stretched, rose, and splashed some cold water on her face. She had to pull it together at least long enough to gather something useful out of today's work. Nemo and the rest of the League would be expecting a report soon, and she only had another few days left in the States. Perhaps there wasn't anything more to be gained from studying the samples, but she had to try. For all their sakes, she had to make the effort. A few more days of study wouldn't hurt.   
  
"Miss Harker?" The voice of one of the soldiers outside came clearly through her door, as did the polite and gentle knock. "There's someone here to see you."  
  
Mina frowned. "At this hour?" she murmured, wondering who it could be with the rest of the League on the other side of the Atlantic. She made her decision, straightened up, then called out to her bodyguard. "Well, show him in, I'll be decent in a second..."  
  
"It's all right," came a soft and somehow familiar voice. "She won't mind."  
  
"Yes my lady."  
  
The door opened, the soldier politely averting his eyes. "The lady Orlando, Miss Harker."  
  
Mina spun around fast enough to see the look of puzzlement on the man's face just before the door closed behind him. The young woman... young-seeming woman, at any rate, for Mina knew from first-hand account that Orlando was older than she and Dorian put together... stood there with a slight smile on her face, hands clasped in front of her.  
  
"Orlando!" The two women came together in an enthusiastic embrace. "Dear Lord, it's been so long..."  
  
"Two years, seven months, and eighteen days." Orlando smiled as Mina gave her a thoroughly bemused look. "Not really. But it has been a long time. I thought, seeing as you were in the neighborhood, that I would drop by and find out what you had been doing with yourself?"  
  
"League business..." Mina disappeared decorously behind a screen, dressing more quickly than she had had energy for a moment ago. "This and that. Nothing terribly exciting, at least... not until recently." She sighed, wondering if she should be talking to her old friend... (more than friend, her mind whispered)... about the League. Then again, it wasn't as though her friend was any more ordinary than her colleagues. She herself had seen the proof of that.   
  
"Why?" Orlando's eyes narrowed at her "What's wrong, Mina? You look..."  
  
Damn. Was she really looking that peaked? She shrugged it off, moving towards the door and dismissing all concerns with a casual remark. "I haven't been sleeping well... working in the laboratory too late, I imagine. It's nothing."   
  
The other woman folded her arms and stood in the doorway, barring Mina's exit. "I know you better than that, Mina. There are some days when I believe I know you better than you know yourself. There is something the matter, something that's been causing you to loose more sleep than you usually do when you're working. What's wrong?" Orlando frowned. "Does it have something to do with those lovely children you adopted?"  
  
Mina sighed, nodding. She should have known better; after several centuries, Orlando was both more patient and more obstinate than perhaps any other human being alive. "If I tell you, will you let me work?"   
  
She stepped aside and opened the door, bowing ironically. Mina gave her a half-hearted glare as she walked past. "I'll even help you with your notes. As I recall, my handwriting is better than yours."  
  
"You've had more practice."   
  
They fell into step, fell into lighter conversation, and for a moment Mina felt the longing for days and nights long past, so much less bittersweet a memory than her final parting with Dorian, or even the death of her husband. Her love affair with the lord of Whitehall had been long over, and the lord himself had changed past all recognizing, yet the friendship remained as sweet and as precious to her as the day they had met. Now it reminded her of a time long ago, when food did not turn to ashes in her mouth and the sun didn't blind her eyes.   
  
She wondered what Orlando would think of her transformation, and what she would make of Mina's new abilities... and hindrances. She wondered if, after centuries, anything fazed the woman.   
  
"Do you remember the day we first met?" Orlando asked then, as though reading her mind. But then, she had always been able to do that.  
  
"I must have looked such a sight..." Mina chuckled. "Not that it was any great distance from the pony to the ground."  
  
Orlando smiled. "You looked perfectly beautiful," she said, laying her hand on the other woman's shoulder. "You still do."  
  
Mina blushed, smiled, and entered her laboratory with a light heart and a spring in her step for the first time in what seemed like years. Had it only been weeks since she'd arrived on American soil? The case was weighing on her more than she thought.  
  
"So..." Orlando looked around the laboratory. "My. Things have changed since I was learning the sciences ..."  
  
"Well, you couldn't very well expect them to stay the same," Mina teased. She fiddled with her microscope as the slide seemed strangely out of focus, realized her glasses were on her forehead, and replaced them. Much better. "Just in the last decade or so alone there have been tremendous leaps and strides."  
  
"So I've noticed," the other woman commented dryly. "Who would have thought of linking man and ape together in one family?"  
  
Mina sighed at her old friend's tone. She supposed it was to be expected; Orlando could not be presumed to abandon her set-in ways in a day, or even a decade. "As preposterous as it may sound, there is evidence to stand behind that theory. Perhaps man is not the direct descendant of ape, but there may have been some common cousins..." in the microscope. She frowned. What was this she was seeing? "... in past aeons..." she had completely lost the thread of the conversation.  
  
"You've found something?"  
  
"Perhaps..." Mina took the slide out and replaced it with another, a more fresh sample. "Perhaps if the tissue is not quite so degraded." She stared at the fresher sample, wondering. Then she exchanged that slide with another. And then another.   
  
"What is it?"  
  
Mina reached over and compared her current results with her notes (the last of which were entirely useless, as she had surmised). "I'm not sure yet..." she frowned. "I had supposed, at first, that the skin samples we recovered were animal... someone who kept a babooon, perhaps, as a pet. Then ... just now I have compared them with a human's... there are similarities. But I am at a loss to actually quantify what sort of animal this sample came from..."   
  
"What is it a sample of?"   
  
"Skin..." she replaced all the slides and sat back, still with a pensive frown on her face. "Skin samples taken from the fingernails of the survivors... those who clawed at their abductors. Or taken from the grates to the sewers, where they made a hasty escape. There was also blood and fiber at the scene, as well as bits of what appeared to be bone, tooth, and claw."  
  
"So if, like a magician, you wanted to recreate a whole abductor, you could practically do so."  
  
Mina stood and gave her old friend a wry glance. "If, like a magician, I had the ability to convert the parts into a whole creature, yes, I could."  
  
Orlando chuckled. "Merely a suggestion. Perhaps you should look into one of those voodoo resurrectionists."  
  
Mina was abruptly cast back seven years, to a grave in Africa, and a strange-looking priest performing an ancient rite in the distance. She dropped her gaze, thinking of an old hunter who stubbornly insisted that Africa would not let him die. The aged medicine man, the voodoo resurrectionist had not managed to resurrect him. "Perhaps. But I don't set much store by them."  
  
"I'm sorry," Orlando said quietly, and Mina knew she was not talking about the resurrectionist.  
  
"It's all right." Forcing the gloomy mood off of her, Mina reached across the table and handed her friend the stack of witness reports and sketches made by the Pinkertons of what they had seen. "Here... it might be a little easier to understand if you took a look at this."  
  
Orlando dutifully flipped through the stack of papers, peering at the sketches and reading the descriptions and witness reports. "... I don't understand. A new sort of ape they've discovered...?"  
  
"Those descriptions are not of an ape... they are descriptions of the sorts of creatures that have been glimpsed running away from the scenes of failed abductions, successful escapes..." Mina couldn't bring herself to actually say it, not now. "Or other such incidents. They are at least accurate as a still portrait... some bright soul managed to show one to a child, and the poor thing went completely berserk."  
  
Orlando blinked, frowned, looked through the folder again. "But..." she started, and then fell silent.   
  
"Ape-like creatures that walk on two legs, not four, and appear to have some sort of claw or talon affixed to their hands. Some of the samples ... well. I haven't yet looked at all of the fibers, but most of the samples seem to bear it out. The confusing element lies in placing the actual sample between man, ape... or something entirely different that only resembles either sort of creature superficially. Underneath, perhaps on a sort of scale we cannot recognize or examine yet, they might be completely different from us."   
  
Orlando set the folder aside gingerly, as though it had some sort of disease or filth on it that she did not want to touch. "They are kidnapping children, from what you've told me." She sighed. "They are impregnating and creating children to raise children. And what does that suggest about them?"  
  
Mina stared, not at anything in the laboratory, but with the distanced look of someone who is gazing at the past. "That perhaps they are infertile, perhaps they cannot have children of their own. And if that is the case, then perhaps they are not so different from ourselves, from humans, after all."  
  
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There was something almost noble about the young man who stumbled along the streets of the East End. It was an air that seemed to convey the impression of a man who had seen better times and more prosperity, once a long time ago. Whoever the man was he had now clearly fallen upon the most dire of straits.   
  
His clothing, which had clearly once been tailored of fine linen and lace, now hung in tatters around him. Dirt smeared every visible patch of skin, caked in his hair and under his fingernails, and dried blood was matted in the back of his head. His eyes had the glazed look of someone under the influence of copious amounts of opiates, but his walk was steadier than it should have been. He did, however, reek of alcohol. Even the least reputable whores and pimps were avoiding him, shrinking back as though he carried the aura of death wherever he stepped. Which, really, was true enough.  
  
By the time he reached the steps of the brownstone he had been walking for several miles, and it showed in the dirt and manure caked on his shoes, the blisters that had cracked and bled on his feet. He stared at the door for a long time before finally stumbling up the steps and knocking. It seemed to take forever for someone to answer... or perhaps it was just his skewed perception of time. He swayed on his feet as he waited.   
  
"What..." an unfamiliar voice (female?) asked, shortly before he collapsed onto an unsuspecting person who turned out to be much smaller than himself. "Oh dear... Huck..."  
  
Stronger hands helped pick him up, carry him inside. The man started to protest that he could manage by himself, but couldn't force the words out past suddenly clumsy lips. And if he couldn't manage that... his feet refused to respond to his will anymore. He really was falling apart. Or perhaps just exhausted.  
  
"Huck, get Henry..."  
  
He knew that name. Where did he... Oh. Right. He had meant to come here. The man tried to focus his eyes on the ceiling as he was laid down on something soft, with something warm thrown over him. It was becoming so hard to think... words swirled around him, formed in the air out of sound with letters floating before his eyes to make sense of it all. He couldn't think... he was so tired.  
  
"Dorian!"  
  
Ah yes. That was it. Dorian Gray smirked and let his eyes droop closed, safe in the knowledge that he was in the home of his old enemies at last. 


	4. Coming Together

A/N: In order to keep this story at a PG-13 rating, the next chapter of In This Shattered Globe will not be shown on Fanfic.net. If you want to see it you're going to have to go to the website. Nyah. http://www.dollhousecreations.com/users/drucilla/lxg/ is the URL, and it will be updated hopefully within the week. We thank you for your attention to these matters. We being me and all the voices in my head. :)  
  
Also, as someone noted, Percy and Marie are not, in fact, bizarre attempts at Mary Sues. They are bizarre attempts at author inclusions. I refer you to the movie 'Gothic', or any other retellings of that famous story that you can think of.   
  
And now, on with the show!  
  
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When Dorian opened his eyes at first, it almost seemed as though he was back in his own home. Which couldn't be, of course, his home had been seized by his creditors years ago when he had supposedly 'died' and had been unable to reassert his status as among the living. As he slowly awoke and his eyes focused again he realized it couldn't be the case. This room was slightly shabbier, for one thing, although someone had taken pains to be sure it was just as well appointed as any he might find in a house he would like to have owned. The furniture, draperies, and other articles all showed signs of previous use, but the room was no less tasteful or decorous for all that. High fashion on a budget, Dorian thought with a wry smirk.  
  
He sat up gingerly, mindful of the fact that although he was immortal he was still subject to dizziness, nausea, and the other side effects of starvation and thirst. Damnable situation, really. It brought him in mind of what had happened years ago, in Mongolia, and he shuddered. Pulling himself back from the dead, even as he died repeatedly in the attempt, was going to haunt him for the rest of his miserably long life.  
  
There was something on the table next to him... a tray. With food. Dorian blinked. It all came back to him... London, the large home, the still-tremulous Dr. Jekyll, the girl, being carried upstairs and gingerly placed into a bed. At least they were feeding him; the soup was still hot. Someone had taken in his gaunt frame and, most important, had at least some inkling of an idea of what to feed a starving man. He barely stopped himself from devouring the whole bowl in time.  
  
"Oh!" the young woman who had greeted him at the door... greeted his semi-conscious body, anyway... now came out from just beyond his vision, behind the curtain. "You're awake..."  
  
"Hello..." he said, before she darted out the door and left him staring after her, bemused and blinking. Dorian shrugged and turned his attention back to the soup.   
  
"Well, your appetite doesn't seem to have been affected by your privations," a voice came from the doorway a few minutes later.   
  
Dorian looked up, taking in the young man who stood at attention in the doorway. His hands were clasped behind his back, his legs spread slightly, his back straight. And he was dressed in what Dorian thought he remembered as the uniform of one of Nemo's soldiers. That made two of the old crowd here, or at least present in the city. And of them both, at least one of them was likely to still carry a grudge and have the willingness to do something about it for what Dorian had done... back in the day. Damn.  
  
"Good evening," Dorian said politely, wondering what sort of situation he had fallen into this time. The young woman he had seen earlier appeared behind the sailor boy, half-hiding, half peeking out curiously.   
  
"Good afternoon," the young man corrected with a slight but kind enough smile. "You have slept through the evening and well into the next day." He stepped further into the room, and the young woman (who was older than the sailor, Dorian now noticed as he saw both of them in a better light) moved out from behind him to draw the curtains. Dorian squinted in the sudden light.  
  
"Ah..."  
  
"You must have been exhausted from your ordeal," the sailor continued, a polite invitation for Dorian to say where he had been and what he was doing there. The boy must not have been told about him. "You weren't much but skin and bones when you collapsed on Marie last night."  
  
"Marie...?" the youthful-looking man glanced over at the young woman, who swept a polite curtsey.   
  
"At your service, sir," she murmured. Her shyness was almost endearing, or would have been if it didn't reek of slavery. Dorian had seen enough women beaten into subservience to recognize one when she bowed and scraped the earth before him. Once upon a time he might even have indulged in certain appetites with the opportunities presented to him by such an attitude. He might yet again. But for now he was too exhausted, and too aware of who exactly his hosts were to presume upon their hospitality.  
  
"And you are?" he asked, glancing over at the sailor.  
  
"Percy Harker, at your service." The young man bowed. Dorian suppressed a start at the name.   
  
"Harker... Do you by chance know a Wilhemina Harker..."  
  
"She is our adopted mother, yes." There was a world of meaning underneath that tone, encompassing pride, adoration, respect, gratitude, and an unspoken threat against Dorian should anything happen to the woman. This time the immortal couldn't resist a small smirk, though he hid it well behind another spoonful of soup. Clearly no one had told these two about his previous association with the League... perhaps they hadn't had time?  
  
"And is this her house...?" It would explain the greeting, anyway, and the relatively good treatment with which he had been received, considering his departure from the League.   
  
Memories surfaced, regarding a dagger and a quip about beds, and a fight with swords and teeth. Then again, perhaps her welcome would be more warm than he would like. The status of the children didn't explain anything, after all.  
  
"This is the house of Dr. Henry Jekyll." That from the reticent Marie ... Harker, Dorian supposed, since young Percy had said our mother.   
  
"Really." He drawled the word, spinning out his response, thinking. Interesting.  
  
"Yes..." Percy's tone was a little sharper than it might have been, his eyes narrowed slightly. He hadn't missed Dorian's surprise or reconsideration of the circumstances. Which meant that Dorian would have to watch him a little more carefully. The young man was a good deal sharper than he looked, and might have had the wit to keep any knowledge he had about Dorian a secret. His sister, at least, seemed too quiet and timid to worry about. "Is there something wrong?"  
  
He decided to temporize with part of the truth. "Actually, I hadn't expected Henry to do much more than turn me out again with a loaf of bread and a blanket," Dorian shrugged. "Our last parting was on less than friendly terms, and I was under the impression that he wouldn't be pleased to see me again." Less than friendly terms was an understatement, but he didn't really have any desire to be kicked out with a loaf of bread and a blanket.  
  
"Then why did you come here?" Marie asked in her soft voice. Something in her voice caused Dorian to look more carefully at her. Perhaps she did know, too.  
  
"I didn't have much of a choice. I knew no one else in the city."   
  
Percy shrugged slightly. "Understandable, I suppose. And..." he exchanged a glance with his sister, "There is no reason why you should not be housed here until you are recovered enough to move on, and have a place to move on to."  
  
Dorian suppressed the urge to sneer. Their tone was authoritative enough that it was probably evidence of who exactly was more in control of the arrangements in the house, and it wasn't the inimitable Dr. Henry Jekyll. Even after seven years, the man would allow himself to be bullied by a submissive girl and a sailor boy. How pathetic. How utterly like him.  
  
"We have spare rooms, as you can see," Marie interrupted his thoughts, collecting the dishes as she spoke. "And our resources are not so meager that they cannot stretch to accommodate one more..."  
  
"Marie!"  
  
Ah. There was the man of the house, or so he thought of himself most likely. Dorian sighed inwardly, managing not to roll his eyes as Henry came swooping into the room, tugging Marie away from the immortal invalid so quickly that she nearly dropped the dishes. Marie looked startled, and Percy's eyes flickered from Henry to Dorian, although he gave no other sign of being affected by the dramatic entrance.  
  
"Marie, what are you doing? This man is dangerous..." Henry directed what was probably supposed to be a glare at Dorian. The years, however, had not given him any more threatening an appearance than he had had as his milder self when they had last met. If it had been Hyde glaring at him... but, then, if it had been Hyde glaring at him, Dorian thought Marie would not have been in the room for very much longer.   
  
"Oh, come now, Henry. I'm in bed, I have all the strength of a newborn kitten, what exactly am I supposed to do to your precious charges?" Sarcasm dripped from his every word. A strong start out of the gates, and he could most likely bully Henry into doing roughly what he wanted, despite the circumstances of their last meeting.   
  
But it seemed Henry didn't intimidate as easily as he had, as all the signs in the present had indicated he would. "The same thing you did to the rest of us," Henry said obliquely, without clarifying any further. "Percy, would you and Marie see to the children?"  
  
Marie gave them both strange looks as she was ushered out by her brother. Dorian simply smiled, putting on the most charming face he could muster while looking like a cadaver as he did. Henry watched them both like an overprotective mother hen, and the immortal rolled his eyes at the doctor when brother and sister had gone and closed the door behind them.  
  
"Henry, was that really necessary?" His tone of voice was bored, concealing any startlement he might have felt at the changes made in the last seven years.   
  
The doctor folded his arms. "I don't trust you, Nemo doesn't trust you, Mina doesn't trust you, and Skinner would most likely slit your throat if he knew you were here. Tom certainly doesn't trust you, and his new friend is willing to accept Tom's opinion. Yes, I believe it was necessary. You will remain here only until you are recovered, and then you will leave this house." Henry sighed, becoming more like the mousy little man Dorian remembered. "It's for your own good, Dorian. Really. You're not safe here."  
  
"I'm touched by your concern," Dorian threw back, scornful and really too tired to put up any sort of a fight. Henry shook his head and turned to go, as though all further conversation was useless. It seemed he had only swept in to steal the children away from the old reprobate. Things certainly had changed.  
  
"It's not concern," Henry tossed over his shoulder as he left. "It is pragmatism."  
  
Dorian sighed and leaned back against the pillows, hoping wryly that more soup or at least more conversation with the young brother and sister would be forthcoming. He hadn't really expected a cordial reunion anyway, but he hadn't quite expected the level of hostility and wariness he was getting at least from Henry. Was it simply that the man had too much invested in his new life to want a traitor in it, here and now? Or was there something else going on? And... hadn't Henry mentioned children?   
  
Pragmatism. That wasn't something he would have expected from Henry, not when he had first met the man. What good are you, he had asked him, and had honestly believed that Henry had been of no more use than as the box the murderous Hyde had come in. Jekyll, to all appearances, had believed it too. And yet somehow he had grown a backbone, grown up a little bit, become more practical and perhaps even ruthless than Dorian would ever have given the man credit for. He wondered if similar changes had been wrought in the others, and if so, then what was the cause? Marie and Percy Harker? The mysterious children?  
  
He wanted to look into the matter further, to get up and go exploring. But he was still hungry, still weak from walking so many miles and living on so little for so long. And he was so very tired...  
  
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"Do you really think this is going to help?"  
  
Tom sighed. They had been asking each other the same question roughly every half hour or so for the last five hours. And they had been puttering around in the archives for the last five days, in any case. It was, to be sure, better than being in the house with Henry, Nemo, and Dorian all day long. If things got any more tense around there the house was going to explode. Even the children were picking up on it.  
  
"It can't hurt," he took the box of files from Huck and proceeded to lay them out on the table again, moving the last stack over to the edge of the table where it balanced precariously on the edge.   
  
"I suppose."   
  
They went back to the files. Perusing, taking notes, putting the files away. After five days they had gone through two entire rooms of records of disappearances and dead children, going back ten years. They had depressingly few cases that seemed to match what they were looking for. And being stuck in a room with the memory of hundreds upon hundreds of dead children was starting to get to both the Americans.   
  
Come to think of it, maybe being stuck in a house with Dorian Gray wasn't so bad after all.  
  
"Remind me again why we're avoiding the orphanage?" Huck wanted to know. Tom grimaced... his friend hadn't been there for that particular League battle, and Tom didn't think he'd ever really explained what had happened.  
  
"The last time Dorian was around he tried to bomb us all back into the stone age. With some help... that Fantom character the Secret Service had us running around after..."  
  
Huck's eyes widened. He remembered the Fantom all too well... in fact, he had nearly died at the Fantom's hands. "Dorian was in cahoots with the Fantom?"  
  
Tom nodded. "We all thought he'd died when the horror factory went up, but he turned out to be harder to kill than anyone would have guessed." He ran his fingers through his hair, sighing. "For that matter, I guess no one's really sure if the Fantom's dead either."  
  
Huck's eyes narrowed. "You shot him, right?"  
  
"I shot him, yeah. But by the time we got down to the ice there wasn't any sign of the body. Nemo sent divers down as far as he could, but it's possible it just sunk too far for anyone to find."  
  
Huck considered this for a moment, then shivered. "You don't think the Fantom could be behind the abductions, could he?"  
  
Tom's hands froze in the act of reaching for another file, clenching into fists. It was entirely due to the near-death of his oldest friend that he'd run off to England in pursuit of the Fantom, and in direct opposition to his orders. Huck lying in the hospital with no word on his condition for weeks had been bad enough. He didn't want to think about going through it again. "I doubt it..." Tom forced calm into his voice, forced his hands to smooth out over the paper. "Even if he is still alive, he couldn't possibly put together that kind of a scheme so quickly after the last one. If it was just now, yeah, maybe. But not and be connected to what happened with Percy and Marie."  
  
Huck nodded slowly. "Does anyone have any idea what's going on?" he asked as he pulled out a file from the stack just underneath Tom's hand, flipping through it till he found the incident report he wanted.  
  
"The only people who were in any kind of position to know what was going on last time are Percy and Marie, and I don't think anyone's up to trying to get them to talk just yet. The others were really going in blind last time... they had reports that children were being abducted and taken into the sewers, and a map that one six year old kid had drawn, and that was about it. No one wanted to let it go on any more than they had to, so they got the okay to go in sooner..."  
  
"Sooner than was probably wise," Huck nodded. "Damn. We could have done so much more if..." he sighed. "You think Percy will be able to talk anytime soon?"  
  
Tom shook his head. "Kid isn't talking. About any of it. It's as if the years before he got picked up by Mina and Nemo just didn't exist for him. And no one wants to ask Marie about anything, not when she panics if she has to go more than two feet off the front step."  
  
Huck's eyes widened. "That bad?"  
  
"That bad."  
  
He whistled, shaking his head and going back to the papers in front of him. "Damn, but I'd like to get my hands on the bastard... Who does that? To kids?"  
  
"I don't know... I'm not sure I really want to know, Huck. If I knew... But at least Mina will be coming in today with her results. Maybe she's found out something we don't know yet. Something that can help us."  
  
"She better..." Huck stared gloomily at the papers spread out all over the desk, all over the spare chairs in the office. "We're certainly not getting anywhere with this stuff. And this is just one city."  
  
"And they're grabbing kids from all over the continent... and in the States."  
  
Huck nodded gloomily. "We're going to have our hands full with this one."  
  
There wasn't much Tom could say to that. For the rest of the day the only sound in the small room was the shuffling of papers and the scratching of pen on paper.   
  
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"You don't understand..." Henry's voice was agitated, his feet ringing out against the cobblestone street as he walked faster, out of consternation rather than urgency. "I can't do this again. Not now, not when it's been so long since..."   
  
"Henry, you may well be the one person we can count on to be able to see and hear down there in the darkness, if we should have to go into the sewers. You can see and hear things others can't... we don't have anyone else with your talents." Mina's voice was sharper than usual, and she spoke more rapidly as she struggled to keep up with the agitated man. Beside her the unnamed female companion walked easily with them.   
  
"Mina... I'm sorry. But I ..." they were drawing the attention of passers-by. Henry lowered his voice. "I haven't taken the serum in over six months. If I allow him to roam free now, he might very well overtake me... do horrible things, horrible..."  
  
"I know the risks, Henry, but are you really so selfish that you would keep yourself out of danger's way and jeopardize our chances of solving this case?"  
  
Henry stopped in his tracks, staring at her with a look of shock and sudden hatred that would not have been out of place on his alter ego. "That was unfair, Mina," he said quietly.  
  
"You are not the only one with a beast inside, Henry," she retorted, walking on. "You are not the only one with problems to deal with relating to our unique talents. We all have demons to fight."  
  
Henry winced. "Speaking of demons. We've had... a visitor."  
  
"Oh?" She seemed to welcome the change in subject.  
  
"Dorian."  
  
It was Mina's turn to stop in her tracks, and her friend laid a quiet hand on the other woman's arm, as though for comfort. No surprise, since Mina had turned stark white. "You can't be serious... Henry, I saw him die! I saw him crumble to ash..."  
  
"You yourself said that it was entirely possible he couldn't die," Henry shrugged, not unsympathetic to his friend's discomfiture but still aware of taking a perverse pleasure in turning the tables. "His portrait still remains... hanging in your cabin aboard the Nautilus, if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps as long as his portrait remains intact he can only be ... temporarily stopped, not killed entirely."  
  
Mina walked along beside Henry in silence until his home was almost in sight, not saying anything further. Her lady friend had slipped an arm through hers, walking almost protectively with Mina. Henry gave them a couple of curious glances, not entirely sure if they should be speaking of their uniquenesses in front of a stranger.   
  
"Well, you don't have to see him right now, Mina..." Henry tried to be reassuring as he opened the door for the women. "Welcome to my humble home, Miss.."  
  
"Orlando." The woman swept in after Mina, through the gate and inner door, and shook Henry's hand in what he thought bemusedly was a very masculine grip. "And you are Henry Jekyll..."  
  
"I have no secrets from Orlando," Mina said, turning as though to challenge Henry on her having told the young Orlando about their abilities.  
  
"But I might, Mina," he said gently, holding up his hands as though to ward off any unpleasantness.   
  
"Mina hasn't told me about any of you, if that's what you're thinking." Orlando turned and looked at Henry with a disturbingly direct gaze. "But she has warned me that you are unusual, to say the least. Well, I myself am also unusual. I can assure you that I have seen and heard enough that nothing you can say or do will shock me." Some sort of look seemed to pass between her and Mina.   
  
"Considering that the first time I met her she was Lord Orlando, I should say not," Mina murmured.  
  
Henry gaped.  
  
Fortunately the moment was interrupted by a commotion in the playroom. Henry murmured his excuses and left to the sound of Mina explaining the functions of the building as home and orphanage to Orlando, who still sounded like a woman to Henry. Although the revelation Mina had so abruptly dropped onto him would explain Orlando's assertive attitude, he didn't understand how a man could change into a woman so abruptly and completely.  
  
Then again, Henry thought wryly as Hyde scowled at him from the mirrors, he wasn't exactly comprehensible to the average English gentleman either.   
  
He walked on. The commotion seemed to have subsided, which meant Marie had been closer than he had. She had probably gotten to the children first, whatever they had been doing. All to the good, then; she had a more subtle touch with the children than he could ever hope to achieve.  
  
"Now, apologize to her... properly, mind you!"   
  
Henry walked into the play room to see Marie holding two children, a boy and a girl, each by the scruff of the shirt. The girl had a scratch on her face but did not appear to be otherwise harmed, and was glaring at the boy so ferociously that he could see why Marie was keeping them apart. The other boy was actually crying with fury, unloading ineffective blows into the air with tiny fists. They couldn't have been more than six years old.   
  
"I shan't!" said the boy, whereupon the girl lunged at him again and tried to kick the boy in the shins.   
  
"Apologize!" Marie said more sternly, and clamped her fingers deep into their shirts. "And Lily, that is not proper behavior for a young lady."  
  
She had gathered a crowd of amazed young children, and Henry stood in the doorway, watching, smiling. After several minutes of negotiating, each child at arm's length, Marie had managed to achieve a truce, and boy and girl shook hands solemnly. It was at this moment that Henry stepped into the room, and Marie moved over to stand by him as soon as she could withdraw from the attention of the children.  
  
"Well, that was a bit of excitement." He smiled, hugging her gently to him with an arm about her shoulders.  
  
"No more so than any other day," she chuckled. "Hopefully the only excitement for the day, although I predict at least two more temper tantrums, and perhaps another fight."  
  
"About average, I would say," he judged. Marie chuckled.   
  
"Yes, Henry."   
  
Henry stood there for as long as he could without drawing the attention of a child, or a League member. It was this, he thought with a tired yet contented sigh, that the entire past ten years had been for. Reconciliation, atonement, redemption... it had all been for this. A home life, Marie's well-being, children... a motley collection of the abandoned and the outcaste, come together in a skewed but comfortable semblance of a family. And so many months without Hyde. Somehow he had managed to achieve so many months without the serum, without succumbing to the beast within, without falling into convulsions and hysterics because of the inner demon leaping out of the mirror and trying to escape or kill him. He almost couldn't believe it had all come true.   
  
He kissed the top of Marie's head and turned to go, ignoring the strange look she gave him at the unusual (for him) display of affection. In the mirror, Hyde was whispering to him again.  
  
"You truly are a coward," the beast sneered. "You have your perfect life, and yet the moment it's threatened you cannot even submit yourself to my better judgment."  
  
"You have no judgment," Henry murmured. "You are nothing but an animal."  
  
"So you keep saying, and so you think, but I can protect your precious children, your darling Marie. I can protect them ever so much better than you can, which shames you. You won't even admit it to yourself."  
  
"You would protect them and then turn around and kill them!"  
  
"That's also as may be. But we'll never know, since the animals that took your precious girl will take her again when your back is turned, along with all of your children."  
  
Henry stopped in his tracks, forcing himself to find something to do, to look busy, anything to keep the children from seeing him talking to his own reflection and scaring the wits out of them. "What do you mean?" he whispered.  
  
"Do you really think that once these creatures have enough power in their hands to abduct children out of broad daylight, that they're not going to come after you, your children, and your precious Marie? You stole property from them, you took what was theirs. They are going to want to take it back."  
  
Henry stared at his brutish other half in horror. The thought hadn't even occurred to him. "You can't be serious."  
  
"Oh, but I am, Henry." Hyde smirked. "And now you will have to let me out, to save your precious Marie."  
  
"Shut up..." Henry hissed. "Just... shut up."  
  
He walked back to Mina and her friend and stood in the doorway, watching them. Falling back into old habits, Henry? He asked himself. In his own voice, thankfully, and not in Edward's The two women were talking together, smiling; they did indeed appear to be old friends. Henry felt left out and alone, a sensation he hadn't felt in his own home in years. The happiness he had found with Marie and the children only a few minutes ago now seemed so much further with Hyde's comments, and the feeling Henry had that told him the words were true.   
  
He didn't want to go, didn't want to leave them. But he was being forced to admit that it was possible he couldn't afford to stay, either.  
  
Henry took a deep breath and walked into to the room, making his footsteps loud enough that the two women would hear. With as much dignity as he could muster he clasped his hands behind his back, straightening up and trying not to pay attention to the feeling of chortling behind the back of his mind.   
  
"I'm in."  
  
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It was a near-idyllic scene that evening, as twilight dimmed the gardens and cast a damper on the play that had been going on. Tom, Huck, Marie, and Percy were overseeing a game of tag through the grounds that had somehow spread to encompass even the small section in which the others were seated. Mina, Henry, and her new friend Orlando all took it in stride and with good grace. Nemo remained as impassive as ever.   
  
"Are you a priest?" one child had been overheard to ask. She was new to the orphanage.  
  
"He looks like that all the time," a young boy had pertly interjected before Nemo could formulate a reply. "He thinks heavy thoughts, and it weighs down his mouth so he can't smile."  
  
Nemo had surprised both children with the barest hint of a grin, exaggerated just enough to be seen through the beard. It smacked of something Marie might have told them, fanciful and yet oddly true. A voice beside his ear said as much.  
  
"She's right, you know. You should stop being so grave all the time. It'll put you in one."  
  
"Skinner," the Captain said calmly without moving his lips at all. "Go put some clothes on."  
  
"Yes Captain, my Captain," he quipped, and then there was the sound of retreating footsteps. Henry glanced over at the door as it swung open and then shut, glanced at the children to see if they had noticed anything unusual. If they had, they didn't seem worried about it.   
  
"I do wish he'd be more careful," Henry worried. "He'll scare the children one of these days if he's not careful..."  
  
Tom skidded to a halt and nearly fell over the table, managing somehow to evade the attentions of the children for a few fractions of a second. "Don't worry so much, Henry. Skinner knows how to handle himself. Besides, they won't be concerned if you and Marie aren't. Kids have more important things to do than worry about voices out of thin air that aren't telling them they shouldn't have done that." He grinned. "Trust me, I know."  
  
Henry watched the younger man as he was tagged by a boy and dragged back into the thick of things, nodding once to show that he had heard, even if he didn't entirely understand. Perhaps Tom was right... it certainly seemed as if the children were concerned with nothing but what Henry and Marie indicated was to be of concern... and, of course, their own amusement. Nemo glanced over at Henry and nodded obscurely, as if to confirm Henry's thoughts. The doctor frowned, and Skinner walked out again in black clothing and white grease paint, glasses over the disturbingly empty eye sockets.   
  
"Better, oh Captain?" His voice was teasing rather than   
  
"Of course."   
  
"Mr. Skinner!"   
  
The now-visible man was promptly tagged by several children, all of whom immediately began searching his pockets. It seemed to end the games, which had Tom and Huck collapsing on the grass and breathing heavily, bemoaning that perhaps they were getting too old to play with so many children.  
  
"Mr. Skinner!"  
  
"Do you have any candies?"  
  
"Any chocolates?"  
  
"Please?"  
  
Henry had to chuckle. Skinner had immediately become the favorite not two days after bringing all the children to the orphanage, solely by virtue of the fact that he stuffed his coat pockets full of sweets whenever he visited. And then, somehow, after he left the entire house was usually filled with sweets hidden in strange places, although no one had seen him skulk around the building no matter how hard the children tried. Henry had tried to get him to stop, citing health problems as an excuse that even he knew was weak, but he suspected Marie was secretly encouraging the thief.   
  
Skinner doled out the treats. "All right, all right, there's room for everyone, don't push." He handed them out individually and in large clumps that he tossed into the air, sending children scrambling all over the grass. "One for you and one for you and some for everyone!"  
  
Percy, having dumped the last armful of toys into the bin just by the door, went and stood by Nemo's chair. Marie went to help Skinner distribute the libations.   
  
"You're going to spoil them," Henry called over to the two. Marie stuck her tongue out at him, and Skinner did something bizarre that Henry suspected was supposed to be the same gesture... except his tongue was, of course, invisible. He shook his head, bemused.  
  
"Oh, give it a rest, Henry, will you?" the invisible man smirked. "We'll all be out of your hair in a few days anyway."  
  
Henry sighed, admitting defeat for the evening. Besides, he could see Hyde's reflection in the glass of the table, and that was much more interesting for the moment. The bestial man's expression was not one that Henry saw on his counterpart very often: an expression of quiet and deep contemplation. Although Edward Hyde was really a part of himself, there were times when Henry wished he could have heard the other man's thoughts, or somehow knew what he was thinking. Now, terrible as it seemed, was one of those times.  
  
  
  
The sun finally descended over the horizon, putting an end to reflections and gloomy thoughts. "Everyone inside!" he heard Marie call, and something about bedtime. The children were herded in with fewer than their usual complaints. Most likely it was due to the candy.  
  
"Henry?" Nemo's hand came down on his shoulder abruptly, making the doctor jump. "Will you be joining us?"  
  
"In a little while..." Henry sighed. "I'll be in shortly." 


	5. The Game is Afoot

A/N: A ves ordes, as I have been ordered, here is the next installment in the story. There is a section between the last chapter and this, as I have mentioned, on a separate website since Fanfic.net no longer hosts NC-17 fics. In order to maintain the rating, the missing chapter is at http://www.dollhousecreations.com/users/drucilla/lxg/ for reader consumption.  
  
None of the characters within are mine. Any resemblance to any characters, living or dead, fictional or factual, is purely intentional. I own no copyrights or deeds to anyone. For a partial bibliography, I refer you again to the website. A works-cited will be available on Fanfic.net at the conclusion of the story.  
  
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The room, Skinner thought, was very much like the room in which he had first met most of the members of the League. In fact, apart from the absence of the Freemason's logo on the doors and (probably) the titles of the books, it was identical. The people in the room, however, were more numerous and vastly different. They were both more and less unusual than they had been the last time he'd wandered through these stacks. And Skinner devoutly hoped that the circumstances were equally changed. He didn't want to deal with a pair of traitors within the League. Not now.   
  
Nemo, Mina, and himself were the only hold-overs from the last time they had been in the room twinned to this one. Even Tom and Henry hadn't been there at first. Now they were surrounded by others… Mycroft Holmes, whom Allan had suspected of initially being M (and Skinner felt that familiar pang of regret as he thought of Allan, the man who Africa would not let die). Mina's friend Orlando, whom Mina had flatly stated would remain, and whom (it was rumored) was as extraordinary as any of them. Dorian… although no one particularly trusted him, everyone did agree that he might be useful in the upcoming assignments. If nothing else, Skinner had commented acerbically at an earlier, more private meeting, he would be useful for catching spare bullets. Tom and Huck, who had gained instant support from the League: Tom seven years ago, by virtue of his loyalty and prowess and ability to learn, and Huck on the recommendation of Tom.   
  
There were others, too. When the League had been formalized despite the handicap of being formed out of M's treachery they had been placed under the auspices of Special Branch, ostensibly under the command of a man called Narraway. Tonight he had sent his own man to watch over the proceedings as he couldn't be here himself, one Inspector Thomas Pitt. Pitt, in turn, had brought his own lieutenant from a previous posting along, Mr. Samuel Tellman. Skinner noted with some amusement that both Tellman and Pitt looked distinctly uncomfortable in the presence of so may whose abilities they must have heard about. It couldn't have helped that they didn't see Skinner, who was entirely invisible at the moment.  
  
The final newcomers to the meeting were the former police Inspector Abberline and a prisoner with a very disgruntled look an a not-quite-sane glint to his eye. Although the English-born League members were familiar with Inspector Abberline from the sensational case of two decades ago, they had no idea what the much younger prisoner was doing there. Mycroft had refused to say anything about either of them. Skinner had promised to investigate later.  
  
"… and we have received reports from several major European cities about similar goings-on. After thorough inspection," Mycroft nodded to the two Americans, "we have concluded that the abductions in Paris, Berlin, Rouen, Seville, and others, as well as those in the United States, are not only similar but identical to the abductions here in Britain. There can be no question but that they are all being perpetrated by a wide-ranging organization, the most disturbing aspect of which is that it has crossed the Atlantic Ocean."  
  
There was a low murmur around the other end of the table. Skinner frowned, having long been concerned about that particular fact himself.  
  
"Special Branch, in collaboration with other agencies from all the affected countries, has put together a mobilization list of those we might recruit for this endeavor. Two of you, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Finn, have already been notified of your status, consider yourselves recruited.'  
  
Pitt looked especially worried about that fact. Skinner noted the wedding band on his finger, wondered if there was something less innocent or if the man was merely worried about his family, what he would tell them and whether or not he would be in danger.   
  
"For the next month, consider yourselves on assignment. For some of you, my friends, the mission will be to do the overseas recruiting. You will travel, courtesy of Nemo's spectacular inventions, to all of the affected countries and liaise with the appropriate agencies. You will deliver a special telegraph device through which we will all be able to contact each other, and you will co-ordinate efforts to prevent further abductions while we determine the most likely, most feasible means to rescue the children already in enemy hands."  
  
"For the rest of us, we will remain here, establishing a laboratory, preparing a base of operations, and making the way for the children to have homes again, anticipating that we bring any back, of course." Everyone across the table winced at Mycroft's matter of fact statement that there might not be any surviving children.   
  
"Adoption agencies in the United States are standing by," Huck said quietly, seeming to take the news the hardest. "It's generally felt that since we're the newest and biggest country involved, we have the most space to accommodate children. Lots of families starting out, and all that."  
  
"What sorts of folks will we be recruiting?" Skinner asked. "I mean, have they all been checked out? Don't want a repeat of last time."  
  
Dorian glared at Skinner, or at least in the direction from which Skinner's voice was emanating. The invisible man only laughed.   
  
"Well, it's not like you're all that trustworthy, mate. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that."  
  
"They will be given no opportunity to retain any secrets which they might collect while on board the Nautilus," Mycroft interjected, heading off what might have been a lengthy verbal battle as Dorian opened his mouth to retort. "And once here they will be installed in a laboratory controlled by us. Nothing will be left to chance this time, and all information will be checked and re-checked to be sure of its accuracy."  
  
"Begging your pardon, sir," Pitt interrupted, soft spoken and very correct of speech for a policeman. "Won't that take time?" The implication was that they would be dawdling, taking up valuable time that would be better served rescuing the unfortunates from what was undoubtedly a dire situation. It was an issue they were all dealing with, feeling to one degree or another as though they were dawdling, taking their time, lazing about while children suffered and died.   
  
"It will indeed, Inspector. But it will take more time if we were to investigate every sewer, catacomb, and underground cavern inch by inch. With a little preparation we might eliminate the need for any such endeavor."  
  
"Besides," Skinner couldn't resist putting in, grinning as he watched Tellman jump and stare about as though he might actually see the invisible speaker "These aren't exactly ordinary folks we'll be hunting."  
  
Mina directed a quelling look at the man's voice. "Skinner is right, Inspector. Although I have exhausted all the tests and avenues of investigation available to me, there are many other scientists on Mr. Holmes' list with whom I must consult, and whom we hope to recruit into our investigation. These skin samples taken from what we believe to be the abductors are not human, not as we know the word anyway. If I had to venture a guess, I would say that they belonged to an ancestor of the species, except that neither do they resemble any known human ancestor."  
  
Pitt shuddered. "You say it so casually, ma'am, but are you certain you will be able to discover any information that will be useful to the investigation?"  
  
Mina bristled slightly as Dorian smirked, then calmed when she saw that the Inspector meant no offense by her sex. "Forewarned, as they say Inspector, is forearmed. We have resources that are not available to the general public, resources that can make us vastly more effective than any law enforcement agency, to a certain extent. But we are still only a small handful of people, and the more minds we have working at this problem, the faster we will be able to achieve a lasting and beneficial resolution."  
  
Pitt nodded, not happy with the delay but apparently satisfied by the explanation.   
  
"And what are the rest of us doing here?" Dorian asked, irony and bitterness dripping from his words like acid. "I can understand the presence of the police, but this young … psychotic…" Even Dorian, it seemed, was having troubles describing the angry man whose arm was gripped tight in Abberline's old, thorny hand.   
  
"Older than you," the man sneered. Everyone stared at him for that; the League with a touch of humor, knowledgeable about Dorian's young appearance and old age, and the police with curiosity and bemusement, for the two appeared to be the same age. Henry tilted his head slightly, listening to a voice that only he could hear. Only Mycroft and Orlando, for some reason most likely known only to Mina, seemed unfazed.   
  
"That's as may be, Mr. Kane, but you were offered a full pardon in exchange for your help and services in this matter, and you will be silent unless you are invited to speak." The man's words lashed the prisoner into mute hostility, glaring around the table with (or so it seemed) especial hatred for Mina. She ignored him completely.   
  
"I can understand why some of these scientists are on the list," Skinner remarked, picking it up from where he had been reading it over Tellman's shoulder. Both policemen jumped again. Skinner dodged a flying elbow with a smirk. "Easy there, Thomas… But why do we need a botanist? Or, for that matter, an astronomer?"  
  
"They are botanists and astronomers, Mr. Skinner, in the same way that I am an engineer." After seven long years of acquaintance Nemo was taking the invisible man's antics in stride, and even with a bit of humor. "And would you please cover yourself, for the sake of those here who are not used to your…"  
  
"Shenanigans? Antics? Pranks?"  
  
'Unique abilities."  
  
Skinner smirked and reached over to the table where he'd left his clothing, dressing himself slowly and leisurely just to watch Tellman's eyes bug out even more. Tom rolled his eyes at the invisible figure, and as Skinner began to apply the white-face cream that gave visibility to his facial expressions he winked at the young American.   
  
"What is to happen when we've got our collection of scientists, then?" Skinner continued, "And when we've told all the nice policemen what to do?"  
  
Abberline rolled his eyes.   
  
"With luck and the proper information, we will then have a better idea of what we are dealing with." Mycroft's tone was utterly placid, but then nothing had ever seemed to faze the man. "With the telegraphs in place and the available resources of our scientists we will be able to understand what we are up against and mobilize an appropriate team for each site within a matter of days. After the initial phase things will move much more quickly."  
  
"I don't want to sound too obvious," Abberline interjected dryly. His voice was low and gravelly with age, overuse, and drink. "But don't you already have all the information sources you need right here in London? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have two survivors who could tell you everything you might want or need to know? In my business we used to call them witnesses."  
  
"Corrected," Henry said with quiet annoyance before anyone could stop him. "They've been through enough, and we don't even know if they saw or heard anything that could help us. For that matter, they were only held in one city. These kidnappers are all across the continent of Europe and into the United States, possibly beyond. This has grown much bigger than either Marie or Percy should be asked to handle."  
  
Abberline shook his head but didn't say anything else. Next to him the man Mycroft had called Kane sneered, and looked as though he would have made some sort of comment. Everyone glared at him, though, except Dorian, which seemed to keep him silent.   
  
"In any case, their testimony will not be able to help us," Pitt pointed out. Definitely a family man, Skinner decided. He looked in control but still very pale at the thought of interrogating children; determined to do what it took to get the case done and over with, but still not relishing the kinds of questions he would have to ask or the kinds of answers he might receive. "Not in the long run, anyway. They… if I'm not mistaken… only know about one city. And from what I've heard here today this is happening all over the world. What they know will only be of very limited use, and I'm not in favor of causing undue suffering to young men and women."  
  
"As though your opinion mattered," Kane sneered. "We are all aware of who will be making that decision…"  
  
"You shut your mouth," Pitt's companion, Tellman, spoke up for the first time.  
  
"Ah, the dog defends his master?"  
  
Abberline shook the man by the arm. "Sebastian…" he growled in a warning tone, and the wild-eyed man subsided again. Pitt ignored him with magnificent ease. Everyone else was silent, uncomfortable with the associations that had been thrust upon them.  
  
"You have two days in which to say your goodbyes," Mycroft continued when no one else said anything, "But no more. As Inspector Pitt has pointed out, time is of the essence. Mina, you will remain behind, as we agreed, and set up your laboratories for the arrival of the scientists. We will send whom we can to you via the exploration pod, but I cannot guarantee that you will have what you need to achieve results before the Nautilus returns."  
  
"There are more exploration pods, should we require them," Nemo spoke up with more than a little pride in his voice. "If necessary, we will attempt to supply Mina with all the scientific knowledge she requires, and then some."  
  
Mina nodded her thanks to the Captain.  
  
"Well, now that that's all settled, can we get down to planning our itinerary so we can get off this rock and get started?" Skinner poked the maps that were rolled up on the table, anxious to change the subject.   
  
"Don't mind Skinner," Mina said, finally unable to bear the discomfiture of the police inspectors any longer. "He's our…" she searched for a phrase. "Litmus test for those in the government's employ whom we must deal with. If they can tolerate him, they can certainly tolerate anything we might encounter in our travels."  
  
Pitt and Tellman nodded, Pitt a little more slowly than his compatriot. Abberline just made a sort of snorting noise that said he had seen more than his share of unusual circumstances, and they settled themselves again in their seats. Nemo unrolled the maps over the table, bringing out the instruments of navigation and plotting a course, and everyone leaned forward to see what he was doing, comforted by the action of doing something at least.   
  
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"I hadn't expected to see you here," the woman said quietly. In the doorway the man shifted from foot to foot, his usually self-satisfied and imperturbable demeanor fallen to reveal uncertainty, annoyance, and a child-like sense of the ground having been pulled out from under him.   
  
"I hadn't expected to be here. I never expected to come back."  
  
"But you did."  
  
"I had to."  
  
"Because I have your portrait."  
  
"Yes."  
  
Mina stared at Dorian for several minutes longer. The immortal wouldn't look at her, glanced at every corner of the room but the one in which she was standing, rubbing his hands up and down his arms as though he was cold.  
  
"You were decaying before my eyes," she said after a bit. "I saw you die."  
  
"Could you not bring that up, please?" he asked, irritably, but his shivers increased. "I don't particularly care to remember it any more than I absolutely have to. Once a night is more than enough."  
  
"Sorry."  
  
More silence.   
  
"May I come in?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
Dorian stepped through the doorway but did not venture much further into the room. Although it was sparse, not much different from his own, and showed very few signs of Mina's short occupation, it still made Dorian uncomfortable somehow. He kept looking towards the walls as though his portrait would spring out of them, a tumor from a body, and reduce him to fine ash again. Mina resumed her unpacking, looking at him with something bordering on sympathy.  
  
"It's on board the ship, Dorian. It's not going to bite you. And it's covered, in any case. I wrapped it when I first heard you had… returned."   
  
"Ah." There was a brief pause. "Thank you."  
  
There was a longer pause. Mina's hands slowed in their unpacking and finally froze altogether in the act of putting a blouse away in her wardrobe. "How did you escape?" she asked finally. "We didn't find that your portrait had escaped the flames until days afterwards, and there was no trace of your body."  
  
Dorian shuddered again, moving around in atavistic, animalistic fear, a sense of being trapped by forces much larger and much more powerful than himself. He clearly didn't like the sensation. "It seems that as long as my portrait exists, I can't truly die. My awareness was trapped in that building for a very long time while my body knit itself back together. The process could not begin until the portrait was removed, so …" another shudder… "I made my way down to the nomad's village. They had repopulated the area when Moriarty left. They took me in, sheltered me until a trading vessel passed close enough that I could persuade them to take me to a civilized area."  
  
Mina stared. It was a horrific thought, being trapped in a frozen wasteland as a pile of dust, being slowly reborn into the cold and the snow. Even with the knowledge of Dorian's betrayal, both times, she was finding it hard not to feel at least a modicum of pity for the man. "Then why did you come back to us?"  
  
He took a deep breath, stared out the window that looked out onto the semi-prosperous street below. "I'm tired, Mina. I'm so very tired. If what it takes is my portraits destruction, then so be it. I've cheated death long enough, and I don't want to live like this anymore."  
  
It would have been heartbreaking if it hadn't come from Dorian, who even now couldn't completely be rid of the slight ghost of a smirk around his lips. She had to ask. "And it has nothing to do with the hundreds of missing children, these monsters in the sewers?"  
  
Dorian whirled on her. "Mina, what kind of a monster exactly do you take me for? Just what interest do you think I could possibly have in children? What, in all our associations together, makes you think I am capable of doing something like that?" He shuddered. "Besides… in the sewers? Mina, you know me better than that."  
  
Well, it had been an idle thought at best. She chuckled with only the slightest humor in her voice. "True. You were never one to sacrifice your comforts."  
  
"Damn right."  
  
She put the blouse into her wardrobe and turned. "So what will you do now?"  
  
Dorian shrugged. "I don't have much choice, do I? I've been conscripted into the League once again, and I'm being shipped off to all corners of the globe for god knows what reason. Mycroft's lost what few marbles he had."  
  
Privately, Mina thought it was so they could dump him overboard and let him be immortal at the bottom of the ocean if he got too troublesome. She didn't say it, though. "Perhaps you can lend your experience to the interviews with the scientists."  
  
"What, set a traitor to catch a traitor? Perhaps. I can't bring myself to care anymore. If it will get the man to return my portrait to me so I can crawl off into my hole and die quietly, I'll do it." He turned and started out, evidently seeing no point to continuing the conversation any further.  
  
"Dorian…" Mina reached out her hand before she could stop herself, wanting to say something, anything. There was so much history between them, and very little of it good or pleasant, all of it memorable. She remembered him largely as the man who had broken her heart, treated her cavalierly and tossed her aside, then returned only to betray her a second time. And yet, oddly enough, she still wanted to speak with him, to share her experiences, to sit with him in a parlor with a drink by their sides and a fire in the hearth, talking of nothing of consequence. Orlando had said that it was because, with the prospect of living for a very long time, there were so few who still remembered the things that they did. She herself had forgotten more history than Mina and Dorian put together. Mina hoped that was the case, that it wasn't some misplaced remnant of affection come back to haunt her. Like Dorian.  
  
He turned and stared at her with hollow eyes, the only part of his face that didn't still keep that trademark smugness and arrogance. Everything else about his posture and expression made her irate, made her want to smack the grin off of his face. His eyes haunted her, though, as horrified and exhausted as she had seen in every League member at one time or another. Eyes that had seen too much in one lifetime and were terrified at the prospect of seeing much more.  
  
He turned and left. Mina sat heavily down on her bed, wondering how much trouble she was in if she had this much sympathy left over for a familiar foe.   
  
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Marie stared out the window at the ship unconventionally docked in the makeshift harbor, and the men who loaded crate after crate aboard it. The Nautilus was almost fully prepared, and in two hours it would be leaving with nearly everyone she cared about in the world aboard, to go who knew where and deal with who knew what. It was a feeling that only grew more familiar with time, and yet she hadn't gotten used to it at all. She hoped she would never get used to it, that small feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach that she would never see her brother again, or Nemo, or Mina… or Skinner, not that the verb applied to him. She smiled a little, thinking of how the phrase 'see you soon,' had become their own little private joke.  
  
But this time was different. This time Henry was going with them. And suddenly Marie was afraid again, that paralyzing, ground-shaking fear that gripped her every time she was left (as she saw it) alone, without protection or defense, without friends or allies.   
  
"You'll be all right, Marie." The man in question stood behind her, in her doorway, quietly awaiting permission to come in. Despite the fact that it was really his home he always waited, diffident, outside her door to be invited in.   
  
This time, out of all the times, she didn't. Her arms wrapped around her waist, hugging herself tightly. She didn't feel aware of the movement at all. "You're leaving with them." Her voice sounded distant to her. "You're leaving again. You said you'd never leave again."  
  
"I have to." His voice was equally quiet, equally distant. "They need as many people as they can get, as many scientific minds, to gauge the usefulness of our recruits… to study this problem so we can find it, fix it… stop it."  
  
"But why out there?" she cried, whirling around. The argument had been going on since late the previous night, and it hadn't been resolved yet. "Why do you have to go with them this time? Now, of all times, why does it have to be you? Don't we need you more than they do?" It was almost 'I need,' but she stopped herself barely in time.  
  
"Because I can…" he fumbled for more words, better words, any way to explain it better than his current clumsy attempts. "Because I have the ability, and I can't sit idly by and let evil things happen because I was too afraid… or cared too much."  
  
She stared at the floor. She stomped a tiny foot in distress. "I don't want you to go."  
  
"I have to."  
  
Silence. "Who will take care of us when you're gone?"  
  
"Mycroft will, of course… and Thomas. And Mina, you have her."  
  
Marie blinked at him. "Mina is staying behind?"  
  
Henry nodded, looking a little forlorn and lost in the doorway as he was standing half-hidden behind the frame. Marie gestured him in, and either drew him into an embrace or collapsed into his arms. "It's not the same," she said quietly, somehow managing to give the impression of inconsolable grief without shedding a tear. "You've never left, not in years. You said you would always be here."  
  
He hugged her tight, kissed her forehead, stroked her hair. Anything to make the parting easier, a little more bearable. "Sometimes life conspires against us. I will be back, Marie, you know that."   
  
"I know. But that doesn't make it any better."   
  
She sighed. They stood like that for some time, until the bells on the Nautilus began to toll and the horn sounded their imminent departure. Even then, Marie was extremely reluctant to let him go, and released him only with the promise of his safe return. Henry gave it willingly, and then nearly bolted out the door before his protective impulses could keep him in the room much longer.   
  
"Well, he made it out of here faster than I thought."  
  
If Skinner had been hoping for a startled or indignant reaction from her, he was disappointed. She turned towards him, smiling slightly. "Aren't you supposed to be on board the ship?"  
  
Skinner chuckled. "Probably. Not that they ever notice when I come or go. I've a little time left, it always takes them a while to leave port even when the bells have been sounded." He brushed his fingertips over her cheek, a phantom whisper of a touch to her, somehow deeply meaningful to him. "Are you going to be all right?"  
  
"No…" The tears welled in her eyes again, but still she managed to keep them from falling. "But I will survive. And you had better do the same." With that always strange unerring accuracy she clasped his hand, squeezing it gently. "I want to see you again, Rodney Skinner. I'm not yet tired of you enough to say goodbye."   
  
They chuckled. "I'll have to work harder, then," he teased her gently, then blinked as she hugged him tight. One of these days, he thought to himself as he wrapped his arms gingerly around her, he was going to have to ask her how she managed to do that just by touching so little a thing as his fingertips. What sort of sensory organs were in her palms, that she could tell where he was through the slightest touch? It didn't matter, not now.   
  
"I'll be back, darling. You know I will." He kissed her hair, and she sighed.   
  
"I know."  
  
"I'll always come back."  
  
"I know…" she hugged him tighter. "I just feel… so useless. You always go off and do glorious things, good things. And I … I can't even get beyond my own front door."   
  
Skinner frowned. "You're not useless, girl… who's been telling you such things?" He could imagine at least one person. "Has Dorian been at you?" Two. "Or Hyde…"  
  
"No… no. Dorian's been a perfect gentleman… which is to say I don't see much of him at all." She shrugged ruefully. "Henry won't let me see much of either him or Edward. I don't think Henry would let me see either of them at all if he could help it, but there's not much helping it here, not all the time, not when there's so many other things to worry on."  
  
"Marie…" he gripped her by the shoulders and held her at a little distance, wishing he could look her in the eyes and tell her with more than just his words. Except that he already had the uncomfortable feeling he could do just that. "You are not useless. You are not worthless, and it is perfectly understandable that you should be as afraid as you are. For Godsakes, Marie, you spent the first years of your life going through things none of us can imagine. And you survived. You can't get over that in a day, or a year, or even ten years. You're doing wonderfully, and you're a wonderful person, and don't let anyone… even Henry… tell you different." Had all that pap spouted from his mouth? He must be getting old.  
  
Marie smiled, and touched his cheek. "You're sweet, but I wonder if you're right…"  
  
"Of course I'm right. I'm always right. I am Rodney Skinner, Gentleman Thief and Invisible Man Extraordinaire!" He struck a grandiose voice, since poses were out of the question. It got the hoped-for laugh, and he smiled. "Don't worry so much, darling. We'll be back before you know it, and in the meantime you can be assured of your usefulness by taking care of this score of children Henry's decided to take care of, for reasons beyond the ken of us sane people."  
  
Marie laughed. "He has a charitable heart, Rodney, and you do too, if only you'd admit it."  
  
Skinner frowned slightly. "He also has an overdeveloped need for atonement, and you'd better watch that around him when he gets back. I think he's developing some sort of St. Francis complex."  
  
She nodded. "I will. And you'll have to watch him for me, while you're away."  
  
"Of course." He smirked. "What kind of invisible man do you think I am?"  
  
"A kind and generous one." She kissed his cheek, then hugged him tightly again. "I wish you didn't have to go."  
  
"I wish I didn't either, darling," he said quietly, very much aware of Nemo yelling for him on the ramps. "But I do. Before Nemo sends the bloodhounds after me." He kissed her on the forehead and grabbed his coat as he left, dropping his hat on her head. It fell down over her eyes, and he was gone before she'd pulled it up again. She pelted down the stairs and out the door, for once not thinking about the …  
  
the outside…  
  
she was outside…  
  
fear took her  
  
shook her  
  
held her in place  
  
she was outside  
  
on the ground  
  
that could burst open  
  
any moment  
  
and swallow her again  
  
And then Percy was there, hugging her and whispering to her and leading her back to the house. Percy, her younger/older brother, taller than her by nearly a foot now and ganglier than ever. He held her tightly as they murmured in their secret language and cried to each other quietly, in their minds, where no one could hear. She didn't want him to go, she never wanted him to go, but it was what he wanted, the ship, the Nautilus, the voyage, the freedom. And she wasn't going to deny it to him.  
  
"You bring them all back to me," she whispered.  
  
"I will."   
  
"You make sure He doesn't get hold of them.'  
  
Percy nodded, grim. "I will."  
  
They clung to each other. "What are we going to do?" she murmured as he carried her in and set her down on Henry's favorite chair in the library.   
  
"We're going to help them…" Percy said, with more confidence than he felt, aware that she knew it too. "We're going to do what we have to, because they're doing everything they can. Even though they have no idea what they're up against." Pity laced through his tone, and fear.  
  
"What do you think happened?" she asked, curling up as Percy tucked a blanket around her. "It wasn't this bad… there are so many more of them now. So many more…" she shuddered. Percy kissed her forehead.   
  
"I don't know. But they'll find out. They'll stop it, if anyone can."  
  
Marie nodded. "Be careful…" she whispered in her mind as he left. "They're still out there... and they haven't stopped listening."  
  
I know… I love you, sister.  
  
I love you too.  
  
The comfort echoed in her mind long after the Nautilus had disappeared from the water. Marie wrapped her arms around her knees, shivering in the house that suddenly seemed so much emptier, thinking about the forces that were aligned against them. Wondering if they really were still listening, out there in the darkness. 


	6. Cabin Fever

It took three days aboard before they started driving each other insane.  
  
The worst of the lot actually seemed to be the new policeman, Tellman. Henry was all right in his eyes, if a bit bumbling, and he had grudging respect for Nemo. But he had stated publicly that he didn't see any use for Dorian, had cringed and moved to the other side of the hall whenever Sebastian walked through the ship (always in the custody of Abberline), and was downright terrified of Skinner. The invisible man, of course, found this all very amusing. Dorian seemed to have decided to keep to his cabin whenever possible after the first day.  
  
Tom and Huck ran around either in blissful ignorance or tactfully overlooking everyone's quirks and foibles. It was probably a good thing, giving everyone at least two people around whom they could act normally without fear of reprisal or retreat. After three days a routine had tentatively been established. The League clustered together, moving in and out of rooms regardless of each other's presence. Abberline would only permit Sebastian into areas where the League was. Pitt moved freely between groups, although the conversation seemed to become stilted and delicate in his presence. Tellman, for the most part, was avoided by nearly everyone; his prickly personality and conservatism had made everyone wary of talking to him.  
  
Even among the League there were tensions, but they managed to suppress most of them in favor of not being left totally alone. Except, perhaps, for Nemo, who seemed to take everything in his impassive stride.   
  
Henry Jekyll sat in the dining room (it was just the opulent side of being called a 'mess'), twisting his fingers together and fiddling with his pocket watch. His courage and quiet strength seemed to be diminishing with every mile they sailed away from London.  
  
"You keep doing that, you'll tie your fingers in a knot," came a voice at his elbow. Henry jumped.   
  
"Skinner, would you please put some clothes on?" he retorted in a higher pitch than he would have liked. "It's not... right." Proper, had been what he had meant to say, but he had just the other day been teased by Dorian in passing about his rigidness and propriety, and was reluctant to put himself forward as a result.   
  
"Sorry, mate," Skinner chuckled, but his voice did hold a note of apology. He pulled his coat off the chair; evidently he had been in the room before Henry had entered. A compact of white cream floated into the air and began to spread itself on a face. "Better?"  
  
But Henry wasn't done with him. "I don't see why you have to run around ... unclothed..." he muttered.  
  
"Well, it's the only way I can really be invisible. I mean, if I'm invisible but there's a lot of clothes walking around, that's not very stealthy, is it? Wouldn't be much use to the League, then."  
  
There wasn't much Henry could say to refute that, so he acknowledged it with a nod and pushed it aside. "But do you have to do it around the children?"  
  
The coat sat down, Skinner's face mostly formed in the white paint. He seemed to have no expression, though, carefully keeping a blank stare on his face. "I don't do it often around the children, mate. But if you think something's going on and you want to send in a spy, or if you're worried about Marie and you don't want her to know about it, you're going to want me invisible. And that means no clothes."  
  
That effectively ended the argument. Henry returned to playing with his watch, and Skinner poured himself a drink. The ship listed slightly to one side, or seemed to. Perhaps it was just the doctor's nervousness.   
  
"You'll want to settle down, Henry," Skinner said finally. "It's bad enough without you worrying like someone's grandmother. What's got your knickers in a twist?"  
  
"The assignment," Henry said with dry candor. Skinner shrugged, wiping his hands on a handkerchief before pulling his gloves on.  
  
"It's got everyone spooked, mate. But you seem more ..." he thought briefly about phrasing it as 'incompetent' and then tossed the word aside. "I don't know... you seem more wrecked than usual."  
  
Jekyll was quiet.  
  
"Is it the orphanage?"  
  
Henry shook his head. His hands moved faster over the pocket watch.  
  
"Is it the survivors?"  
  
The pocket watch slipped from Henry's hands and dropped to the floor with a clatter that sounded strangely loud in the room. His eyes flashed electric blue, then settled back to their normal faded color. For a second it looked as though Hyde would burst from his skin on his own, without the help of the formula. The moment passed.   
  
"They were all placed years ago, all but the oldest. Gordie, he went to a family in Salisbury. George went up north. Another went to a colleague of mine, I can't remember the poor lad's name. Even Katherine Stoker took a boy in."  
  
"So, they're safe. They're well cared for. We've got two ourselves, what's the problem?"  
  
"The problem is that whoever is taking the children again is going to want to take them back. We've stolen property from them, and they're going to want it back." Henry shuddered. "And I left Marie and Mina alone... the other parents, they have no way of knowing... the other children... young men and woman they'd be, now. There's no way of telling them, unless we telegraph each and every one... I don't even know where they are now..." The watch spun around and around in his hands.   
  
"Marie can take care of herself better than you think," Skinner said quietly.   
  
Henry looked up at him with almost enough ferocity to be called a glare.  
  
"That's who your really worried about, isn't it?"  
  
"That's no business of yours, Skinner."  
  
"Henry, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but if that girl is going to make you so crazy you're not going to be able to help, it's League business. You need to focus. You can't let her distract you." He moved around the table and leaned forward, hands flat, almost looming over Henry. "You need to stop thinking about her."  
  
Henry hunched over for a second, shaking. Then he turned and looked up at Skinner almost hatefully, startling the invisible man into taking a step back. "As though you haven't been thinking about her from the moment you stepped on board," he said, in a voice that was low, gravely, and sounded of Hyde.   
  
"Whether I have or not, that's not anyone's concern. I'm not the one who's been a nervous wreck over the girl for the past three days."  
  
"Yet you think of her as more than just the little sister or foster daughter that everyone else in the League sees her as."  
  
Skinner frowned. That was hitting too close to the mark. "And if I fancy her, what business is that of yours either? She's a grown woman, she's perfectly capable of telling me to naff off if she wants to. And before you get all huffy about intentions..."  
  
"Is she?" Henry overrode Skinner in a voice that was still Hyde-like and starting to unnerve the other man. "Is she really? You know what she is, how she thinks. She still suffers attacks of hysteria and panic if she so much as sets foot outside her door without a League member present. Do you really think she is capable of turning you down?"  
  
Skinner's frown slid into a scowl, not liking the way this conversation was going. Apart from the sheer annoyance of Henry telling him to go stuff himself when he was pretty sure Henry fancied the girl himself, there was also the slight fear that Henry was right. That he did have feelings for the girl, feelings that she would not be capable of rejecting. Especially him; he remembered that night very vividly, although he was not so sure that Henry did. And he remembered that he had been the one to carry Marie out of the tunnels. Would that earn him a special place in her heart that would not have otherwise been there? He didn't know, and the thought was sickening.   
  
-  
  
-  
  
-  
  
Nemo was bent over the maps and stacks of files with the biggest headache he had had since the Ireland assignment. Between the trouble among his passengers, the trouble with the assignment, and various problems on, in, and around his ship, he was starting to consider if maybe early retirement might not be a bad idea. To make matters worse, he shared Henry's suspicions that the kidnappers might not try for the group that had been snatched from their lair previously, seven years ago. Although Percy was safe aboard his ship, the Captain couldn't help the nagging fear that something would happen...   
  
Which, of course, only made him more irritable. He pushed the thoughts away, trying to concentrate on their course and their future investigations. At least some of the new guests were well behaved. Pitt seemed a little unnerved by the League but willing enough to put differences in body and personality aside. Huck, perhaps influenced by Tom, treated everything as though it was perfectly normal and expected. And Abberline... well, Abberline was most likely too occupied with keeping the homicidal maniac from getting lose to worry about whether Skinner was listening in or if Henry was going to snap.   
  
The door creaked open, but Nemo was too preoccupied to really take notice or turn around.   
  
"Permission to come in, Captain?"  
  
Nemo glanced over his shoulder. Percy, thank god, with a tray and cups of... was that... "Yes... thank you." Decorum barely kept him from pouncing on the boy and tray with the speed of a mad tiger. "The tea smells wonderful."  
  
"You've been locked up in here for several hours, I thought you might like something to drink. There's some chicken coming along a bit later."  
  
"Thank you," Nemo wrapped his hands around the cup of warm, thick tea, and sat back down in his chair. "This is exactly what I needed."  
  
The young man beamed with pleasure, practically hopping from one foot to the other in the doorway. Nemo briefly thought about dismissing him, then sighed and decided that he had been staring at the maps long enough. Perhaps it was time for a little rest. "Please... join me."  
  
Percy nodded solemnly, although it didn't wipe the smile from his face or the spring from his step. He took the chair opposite the Captain. "Thank you, sir."  
  
For some reason the 'sir' grated on his nerves. Probably it was the reminder of his responsibilities. Nemo rubbed his forehead again... it was just too much. "Nemo. For the moment, I am Nemo. Not Captain, not sir... just..." Dakkar? No. "Nemo."  
  
If the boy smiled any bigger he was going to crack his head in two. "All right."  
  
They drank their tea in companionable silence, interrupted only by the arrival of a crew member with a tray of chicken curry. As hungry as he was and as good as the food smelled, Nemo took the plates down from the shelves as Percy pushed the maps aside and laid out the place settings, all with perfect decorum and not a hint of hurry. Percy said words over the meal, and they started to eat.  
  
"Mm.." Nemo hadn't realized he'd been so hungry. "This is quite good."  
  
"Food usually tastes good when you haven't eaten in a day or so," Percy replied with unusual tartness. Nemo blinked.  
  
"Has it been that long?" He hadn't been keeping track. And they weren't that long out of port... was this what it was going to be like for the rest of the voyage? He shuddered.  
  
"Nearly. Twenty hours since your last meal. I checked." Percy's tone was still very dry and pointed, and Nemo had the distinct impression that he was being rebuked for something. "Dare I ask, if you collapse of hunger, who's going to run the ship? Not to mention all the other inventions you've brought along on the trip."  
  
"I am not going to collapse of hunger..." Nemo retorted indignantly.  
  
"You haven't eaten in nearly a day, and you've barely had anything to drink. I don't think you sleep, you just stay in here all day and all night planning. That is, when you're not pacing up and down the halls or asking strange questions of our new guests."  
  
"I do not ask strange questions... And there are certain things I need to know to facilitate the investigation."  
  
"The only thing you're going to be facilitating is a trip to the infirmary and an early grave." Percy stabbed a finger at the air in front of the Captain, his vehemence startling and unexpected. "If you don't start taking better care of yourself we will force you to."  
  
"We?"  
  
"The crew. And, more importantly, the League. I'll have Skinner keep an eye on you," Percy smirked. "Is that what you want?"  
  
Nemo shuddered at the idea of the invisible thief coming any closer to his private quarters than was absolutely necessary. "No, thank you. I will endeavor to get the proper amount of sleep and take at least one meal a day. I will even do it in the public area, where you can watch me."   
  
"You'll bloody well do it, none of this endeavoring to do anything. Or ..." Percy tried and failed to come up with a threat that was worse than having Skinner poke around.   
  
Nemo knew it, and smiled. "Your concern for my welfare is overwhelming."  
  
Percy actually blushed. "'s nothing."  
  
They ate in silence for a little while longer. Nemo, in accordance with Percy's demand that he take a little time to himself at least, let his thoughts wander.   
  
-  
  
-  
  
-  
  
Tom and Huck dashed out onto the deck and promptly doubled over, breathing heavily. They were already in trouble with Abberline for baiting Sebastian like that, and they didn't need trouble with Nemo as well, so they had decided to come out on deck. But 'walking out' on deck had turned into 'running for their lives' when they had encountered Sebastian in the hallway... alone. Having heard more about the mysterious prisoner's past in their days on board they had fled for their lives... and ended up crashing directly into Dorian Gray.   
  
"Sorry... didn't realize this was a free-for-all zone," he remarked. Huck stared at him as though he hadn't expected Dorian to be quite so nasty. Tom, used to Dorian by now, ignored the man.   
  
"Come on, Huck..." he grabbed his friend by the arm and dragged him over to the rail. "We haven't been up on deck yet... you've got to see the view. It's amazing out here."  
  
Tom and Huck leaned over the rail and stared out at the ocean as it sped past. Tom's face went blank, thinking of years past and Quatermain teaching him to shoot over the rail of the Nautilus. Huck's eyes stared out over the ocean, wondering at the vast expanse of it, and how fast it was traveling past them. Dorian watched them both, jealous and annoyed.   
  
"So," Dorian drawled, moving up to lean on the rail beside Huck, "What hideous sin did you commit to get dragooned into the League?"  
  
Huck glanced over "Hideous..." he blinked. "Tom's fault, really. It was his recommendation that I come over and sign up when it seemed as though you fellows needed more manpower."  
  
"You mean the League," Tom interjected, turning around to face them both. "Dorian's not part of it."  
  
Dorian scowled. "They readmitted me, Sawyer, and I'll thank you to remember that when it comes time to check the roster and see who isn't there."  
  
"Skinner didn't sell us out, you did."  
  
Huck looked from one to the other, afraid to be caught in the middle. Tom was looming over him protectively, and Dorian was staring at them both as though he could stripe the hide from their bones with the force of his hatred. There was a long, awkward silence.   
  
"So, Mr. Finn..." Dorian drawled, looking away. "What exactly has Sawyer told you about the League?"  
  
Huck exchanged a nervous glance with Tom before turning back to Dorian and trying to be as friendly as possible with his reply. "That it's a collection of men... and woman... with... unique abilities. That we are given assignments where we are the only force standing between a group, a country... the world... and total destruction." He sounded particularly proud of that part.  
  
Dorian, on the other hand, rolled his eyes. "Please. Mr. Finn, the only thing standing between this world and total destruction are the forces of nature. We pitiful human beings, no matter how extraordinary, will ultimately have no effect on the outcome of the world." He paused. "'We' are given assignments? I wasn't aware that you were possessed of any particular unique abilities."  
  
Huck looked down at the deck at Dorian's first words; by the end of the reply he was hunched over, downcast and degraded. "I'm not. I'm just an agent of the United States government."  
  
If looks could kill, Tom's glare would have ripped the immortal to shreds. "You don't have any abilities either... not without your portrait."   
  
Dorian nearly lunged forward as if to strike Tom; fortunately Huck was in the way, and intercepted him. "Whoa... whoa, whoa, easy now..." he restrained Dorian, eyes wide at the sudden display of temper. "What's all this about a portrait?"  
  
The two men glared at each other. "Nothing."  
  
"Never mind, Huck."  
  
Huck glanced back at Tom, frowning, startled that his lifelong friend would keep a secret from him that was obviously big, integral, important. Tom waved it away with a look that Huck hoped indicated he would be told later. He looked back at Dorian, but the other man had walked to the other side of the deck and was staring out at the other end of the boat, watching the sea go by.   
  
Huck sighed. This wasn't going to work, not with them being decent to everyone on board except Dorian. And it really didn't make sense for Tom to be acting this way, although if what Tom said was true about Dorian selling the League out ... out to whom, Huck wondered? He would try and make peace anyway. Carefully, tentatively, he walked over to the other man and leaned on the rail next to him.   
  
"Sorry about Tom," he started. It was a decent start, anyway, not a great one but it would do for now. "It's been hard, being on the ship with Tellman and Sebastian and Abberline... and all the kids in danger."  
  
Dorian glanced sideways at Huck and seemed about to refute his apology, then rethought it and turned back around to face him. "Sawyer always was one to speak first and think afterwards," he murmured.   
  
Huck would have retorted but really, it was true. He shrugged instead. "Tom's a good man. He's got a good heart, he's just protective of me."  
  
Dorian ... almost leered. "And with good reason. Friends like you don't come around every day of the week." His voice was soft, suggestive. Huck drew back for a second, embarrassed, wondering what it was that Dorian thought, or knew, or thought he knew. Just wondering, really, what was going on.  
  
"Tom and I have known each other since we were kids in Hannibal," Huck shrugged, staring at the sea rather than at the man's confusing, old-young face. "We grew up together, joined the Service together..."  
  
"How touching."  
  
Huck stared at Dorian as though the man was a snake that had tried to strike him. There had been no reason... not that Huck could see anyway... for the snappish hostility and venom. Was it just that Dorian was being poorly treated by the rest of the League members on the ship? Or was there some sort of deeper, more embedded rivalry between him and Tom that was bleeding over into Huck, guilt by association? He didn't know, but he thought he wanted to find out.   
  
"Sir, if we've offended you in some way..."  
  
"Then good. Because it's about time we returned the favor." Tom sauntered up and stood by Huck, still protective, almost possessive. Huck glanced at his friend with a little annoyance, wondering why it was that he had to be so snappish all the time, at least with this man.   
  
"Tom..." Huck laid a hand on his friend's arm, but it didn't help.  
  
"What? He's a traitor and a murderer. We don't owe him a damn thing."  
  
"And you're an upstart little boy who couldn't even learn to pit the ace properly..." Dorian snarled. Tom's eyes went very dark, his hands clenching into white-knuckle fists.   
  
"You think you've got the others fooled," he said quietly. "But I'm keeping my eye on you..."  
  
"I'm petrified."  
  
"... you can't be trusted to save your own life, much less anyone else's. Why do you think they sent you out here with us, instead of keeping you at home base with the children?"  
  
Dorian had no answer to that, and from the look on his face it was a question that bothered him more than he wanted to admit. Tom, satisfied at finally getting the upper hand, decided it was safe enough to try and run around below decks. He reached out and grabbed Huck's arm, dragging him with. Huck threw a sympathetic, almost worried glance at Dorian before the door closed on them both. Dorian stared at the door for a long while before turning back and leaning on the rail.   
  
You can't be trusted to save your own life...  
  
Was it true? Could he not even trust himself now? He wanted to know...   
  
But at the same time, he was deathly afraid of the answer. 


	7. They're Coming!

Mina stared at the slides under her microscope until her eyes watered, comparing section after section of the samples taken from cities all over the globe. There were patterns there, clear patterns that she had written down in her notebook. She could see a clear progression, from shape to shape and color to color, over time. Unfortunately what she didn't know, what she wouldn't know until they found one of the kidnappers, was what it all meant.  
  
Hands on her shoulders made her jump, spin around. Her eyes flickered scarlet before she saw who it was. "Orlando!" she breathed. "You startled me."  
  
"I noticed." The woman smiled. "You were deep in thought. About what?"  
  
Mina sighed and handed her the notebook she had been jotting down the results of her examinations. "Patterns," she said succinctly. "The patterns in the ages and descriptions of these cells... but I haven't yet been able to find what these patterns mean."  
  
"Perhaps you've been studying too hard?" Orlando suggested with a smile. "Come away from the microscope and apparatus for a little while. The sky is clear, for once, Come take a walk outside with me along the common."  
  
Mina sighed and rubbed her temples. It was true, at least, that she wasn't getting anywhere with staring through lenses all afternoon. "All right. I suppose I could use the fresh air."  
  
"Of course you can." Orlando smiled and took the other woman's arm. "I'm always right. You should know that by now."  
  
The women laughed, and Mina closed and locked her door so that none of the children could get at any of the chemicals within. As they trooped down the stares Mina paused, listening to Marie school a class of perhaps eight in their arithmetic.   
  
"You worry about this orphanage, don't you?"  
  
Mina sighed, nodded, kept walking. "I worry about its association with the League. If it becomes known ... well, any more widely that is... that the orphanage is run by members and former members of the League, or affiliated with it in any way..."  
  
"Someone or some agency might strike at the children in order to hurt the League."  
  
Mina nodded.  
  
Orlando sighed. "Those are the risks you take, Mina. The kind of lives you live, anyone close to you could become a hostage. If it weren't the children, it would be your husband or Henry's wife or ... well, anyone. That's the way it goes."  
  
"True, I suppose. But that doesn't mean I have to appreciate it. Even you are vulnerable, my old friend," and Mina glanced over at Orlando with the barest hint of worry in her eyes. The other woman tucked her arm into Mina's and patted her hand.  
  
"Don't worry about me, darling. I've survived more centuries than even your Dorian."  
  
Mina chuckled.  
  
"So, what were you staring at so hard?"  
  
They descended the stairs, down the small brick path and out through the creaky front gate. The common was damp this afternoon from the rain a few hours earlier, and mist had already sunk over the better part of it. Thus Mina and Orlando were shrouded in a thick and moistened mystery that sent them precariously walking off the path and into the grass.   
  
Mina sighed. "Stained slides... samples of what we think are the kidnappers' skin and hair, taken from sites around the world for the past eight years. If the investigators at the time had had the technology that Nemo has made available to me, they might have discovered something of value to the investigation and stopped it years ago..."  
  
"Or they would have, like you, been wandering around in circles." Orlando hugged her friend to her. "And you say you have discovered patterns?"  
  
Mina nodded. "There are five distinct types of skin tissue, each of them in varying degrees of development. But apart from that I cannot tell ... they appear to be of the same parent stock, but as though they evolved for different traits down different lines."  
  
"Evolved..." Orlando rolled the word around in her mouth, tasting it. "I remember when all life on this world was created by God, and there was no talk of man and apes as cousins. What are traits, in regard to that?"  
  
"A monk named George Mendel performed a series of experiments with plants over fifty years ago. His work has just recently resurfaced within the last decade as being relevant to Mr. Darwin's theories on this human evolution. Something to do with peas and colors in their pods, but the theory seems to be sound."  
  
Orlando blinked.  
  
"We will take Henry as an example, with his ginger hair." Mina sketched the diagram in the air in front of her with her hands. "If he were to marry a woman with the same, their children would also have ginger hair. But if he were to marry a woman who was, say, dark haired, his children would only have a fifty percent chance of ..."   
  
"And does this apply to everything?" Orlando's eyes were narrowed. "Hair color, eye color... skin color, although I imagine we have seen that already in the African slaves the Americans have intermingled with."  
  
Mina nodded. "It seems to."  
  
"Then these samples...?"  
  
"They seem to have... to belong to creatures that are brothers on the taxonomic geneology, but not the same. For example, dogs and wolves are very close kin, but they are not the same. These creatures are close, but they are not identical."  
  
Orlando walked a little ways with Mina, pulling her close as the other woman shivered in the air that wasn't really that cold. "So, then, what is it about these samples that has you fretting over them?" she asked finally.   
  
Mina sighed. "There are other species that are close cousins to the samples I have been studying. Several scientists have passed along samples of rhesus monkeys, as well as chimpanzees and the ourang-outang. But of all the species I have compared them to the closest I have found was human..."  
  
"But why is that worrying? Perhaps it is simply that someone has stolen your Dr. Jekyll's serum, or ..."  
  
Mina shook her head, interrupting her old friend. "I misspoke myself... I should have said. The closest I have found was that of a human being... an ancient human being. The closest relative of the creatures that have taken the children is the Neanderthal."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Indeed."  
  
-  
  
-  
  
-  
  
Charlotte Pitt had involved herself in nearly every one of her husband's cases in the twenty five years she had been married. Most of the time the involvement was subtle and benign, simply the act of discussing the affair with him over dinner. Other times the involvement had entailed using her family's position and money to gain access to worlds that would have been otherwise closed to her husband. Over twenty five years she had stood beside him through good times and bad, through the terrors of the Ripper murders and the triumph of the defeat of the Inner Circle.   
  
Never had she seen a case as unusual as this.  
  
Her husband, and his friend and associate Tellman, had both been given leave to tell their wives about the unusual natures of the men and woman who would be their co-workers, but no one else. Neither Charlotte nor Gracie had been able to believe it at first, but there was something in their husbands' faces that had told them they must. After the Nautilus had left they had commiserated amongst themselves, and eventually come to the decision that they must visit ... if not the headquarters, as neither of them could find out where it was, then certainly the place where Mycroft was quartered.   
  
An orphanage, of all places. Gracie was dubious, having been intimately familiar with several of them, but Charlotte had heard good things about this institution. Not only from her sister's connections in society but also from a more reliable source... her Great-Aunt Vespasia. Although the woman was old and more frail every year in body, her mind was as sharp as ever, and if Vespasia said the institution was good and run well and compassionately, then Charlotte would take her world for it.  
  
They stood at the door, glancing at each other, shifting nervously. Now that they were here...  
  
"Well, we can't just stand about all day," Gracie said finally, and knocked on the door. There was a moment of silence, and then a small, female voice called down a speaking tube.  
  
"Just a minute..."  
  
They waited, shuffling their feet nervously. Charlotte twisted her shawl around her hands, wondering if perhaps this wasn't one of her husband's cases that was best left alone. Was this orphanage also run by people as ... special... as those whom Thomas was working with? Likely not, or Vespasia would have said something. But then, couldn't they hide their uniqueness from the rest of the world? They must have been able to, or someone would have surely said something before...   
  
The door opened slowly, and as Charlotte and Gracie stepped in they arrived at a small hallway, with no one in sight to have opened the door. They looked at each other, and slowly stepped inside. "It's all right," the voice said again. "Just a minute..."  
  
The door at the end of the hallway, that had been blocked by an iron grate, opened, and a tiny young woman who couldn't have been much older than twenty unlocked and tugged open the grate.   
  
"Sorry..." she said shyly. "It's ... protection."  
  
Charlotte smiled, relieved and disarmed by the presence of the young woman. "Perfectly understandable, given the circumstances." She shook the woman's hand. "My name is Charlotte Pitt..."  
  
"Gracie," the younger woman, still in some odd instances bound by older propriety, bobbed a curtsey which the girl gracefully returned.   
  
"Marie..." she murmured shyly. "Harker. ... er.. You'll be wanting Mina?"  
  
Charlotte nodded slowly, not wanting to put this girl to any more questions. It was as though every word had to be dragged out of her, and even Gracie was wondering what was going on. "If you please..." Charlotte said finally.   
  
The girl... Marie... nodded and seemed to dart upstairs. They could hear the sound of children's voices, but not the occasional patter of feet. Lessons time, then, or at least so Charlotte surmised. Great-Aunt Vespasia had mentioned something about in-house schooling.  
  
The house was incredibly large, and Gracie was even now staring about it with eyes wide in wonder. It seemed as though they had knocked down the walls between two townhouses and built them together... adequate room for the twenty or so children that were living here, and several adults.   
  
"Do you remember how many Thomas said were living here?" Gracie murmured to Charlotte.  
  
"No... why?"  
  
"'cause it seems like there's more than there should be..."   
  
Now that she looked around, Charlotte thought Gracie might be right. There was little evidence, but here and there... more sets of slippers in the hall than there should have been, sized for adults. More books left around than any two people would have had time to read while raising twenty children... more evidence of life and activity than there should have been. Perhaps the reasoning was benign enough, but...  
  
"Mrs. Pitt? Mrs. Tellman?"   
  
The two women looked up. A dark-haired woman dressed somberly was descending the stairs, both looking and them and murmuring directions to Marie, who disappeared around a corner.   
  
"My name is Mina Harker... I believe you will have heard of me?"  
  
This was more like it. Mrs... Miss Harker, Charlotte must remember that she had undergone a divorce... seemed self-assured and competent, much more like a schoolteacher than the mousy little girl who had answered the door. Her handshake was firm but not overly tight, indicating confidence without any need for overcompensation.   
  
"Charlotte Pitt, yes, and this is Gracie."   
  
Mina nodded politely. "Shall we..." she asked without asking, leading them into the library. "I've asked Marie to take over the lessons for the day, so I'm at your disposal for any questions you may have... I assume you're here concerning the investigation?"  
  
Charlotte and Gracie blinked. Miss Harker was the most direct woman they had encountered in a long time.  
  
"Over the years I have made if a habit to involve myself in my husband's cases," Charlotte began, deciding abruptly that frankness and honesty deserved frankness in return. "Although I realize that the ... unusual nature... of this case and its investigators mean that I may not be as useful as I usually can be, I thought that I would offer my services..." she trailed off, realizing how arrogant she sounded and feeling utterly out of her depth.  
  
Gracie was bound by no such feelings. "We figure, even if you've got all the help you can handle on that ship of yours, you can use someone to investigate the kids disappearing around here."  
  
Mina looked from one to the other of them long enough that it made them both shift uncomfortably in their seats. Finally she sighed, leaning back in her chair as though suddenly weary. "I want you to know that we appreciate your offer," she started, and Charlotte knew instantly the direction of what the woman was going to say. "And any refusal of help is in no way a slight upon your abilities. But the creatures that we are hunting are... far outside your expertise. And while that may not be enough to deter you, I pray you then to think of what you could say to your husbands in the letters you will write, so that they may have some explanation when they return to London and find you dead, or disappeared."  
  
Charlotte and Gracie turned white as sheets. The woman's eyes seemed to have darkened, and not just from whatever emotions had induced her to say such things. There was something... animal... lurking in the woman. And something much more human, but much more afraid. Perhaps afraid for them, or perhaps afraid for herself, she didn't know.  
  
It was the fear that convinced Charlotte. "Miss Harker, with all due respect, you cannot frighten us away. Your League has recruited our husbands, and we will not stand idly by while they go into danger, nor will we turn from that same danger ourselves."  
  
Mina sighed, defeated. "I had to try," she shrugged, with no rancor or resentment. Then she sat up slightly, becoming more businesslike in an instant. "Truthfully, we are rather full up on the investigation angle at the moment, but I could use your help."  
  
"With what? This orphan farm you're running?" Gracie spoke up before Charlotte could stop her, and the older woman sighed. Even marriage could not still the sharp tongue in Gracie's shrewd head that made even Charlotte look soft-spoken and gentle.   
  
But Mina took no offense. Instead she chuckled. "Hardly a farm, Mrs... Tellman, wasn't it? That police commander. Yes... it's hardly a farm. Henry took the children in when Marie came of age... I was too busy with the League by that time to take care of orphans, and Marie's foster brother Percy wanted more than anything to go to see with the Captain. Henry, on the other hand, had missed the opportunity to raise the children... "  
  
Gracie frowned. "Marie's one of the orphans?"  
  
"No... no. Marie was part of a group of children we rescued many years ago. Percy and Marie are the only two who remained in League custody... I adopted them myself. The rest were sent to live with friends of the League, cousins, those whom we knew would provide them with good homes. It took the better part of a year, and meanwhile all of the children were in League custody..." Mina smiled; it was clearly a happy memory. "Henry was absolutely taken with the idea of running an orphanage, but at the time he couldn't afford to."  
  
Charlotte nodded slowly. "So when Marie came of age..."  
  
"She and Henry both wanted some distance from the... adventures of the League. They started up this orphanage together, pulling children from the streets, from wherever they could find... children who they thought would be particularly accepting of the unusual things that happen in or around the League."  
  
Gracie seemed mollified, if a bit startled. "So, what do you need our help for, then?"  
  
It was almost the wrong thing to ask, Charlotte thought, as Mina's face settled back into that expression of grave solemnity. "Before Henry left with the rest of the league, he said some things... he seemed to believe that the orphanage might soon be under attack."  
  
"Under attack??"   
  
"By the same people or persons who abducted Marie, Percy, and the others in the first place. He... well, part of him..." Mina seemed to be delicately dancing around some sort of topic. Given what she had heard, Charlotte didn't want to examine too closely. Not yet, of course. "...believes that the creatures that abducted them will want their property back."  
  
"But... what do you want us to do about it? Not that we're fainting or delicate at all, but what can two women do..." Gracie objected.  
  
"More than you might think. If there is a crisis, I am well equipped to deal with any intruders, and I have others who are equally prepared. But there will be no one to take care of the children except Marie..."  
  
Charlotte took her meaning instantly. "And Marie is ... not as strong-willed as you would like?"  
  
Mina's eyes hardened. It had been the wrong thing to say, again. "Marie spent the first fourteen years of her life underground, suffering tortures we still do not know and could not possibly imagine. She still lives in daily terror of being returned to that life."  
  
Gracie shuddered, but pressed on. "No disrespect intended, but can she do anything more than scream and stand there like a ..." she searched for a delicate word to say what she was thinking, didn't find one, and just shrugged.  
  
"Marie will take care of Marie. It is the rest of the children that I am worried about. I realize that you might have children of your own... but if you know of someone, anyone, who might be able to care for them and board here until the Nautilus returns in case of an emergency..."  
  
Charlotte seized upon the opportunity. It was the perfect way to find out what was really going on, what was behind this secretive League that seemed to have swallowed both of their husbands. "My children are grown and at university... I would be happy to stay and help."  
  
Mina smiled. It was utterly disarming in its normality, a perfectly calm and sunny expression on a face that had just before been creased into expressions of worry and weariness. "Thank you," she said, and it was heartfelt. "It will be a great weight off my mind...."  
  
She might have said more but for the knocking at the door that sounded frantic, hurried. The three women looked at each other with wide eyes before tearing out of the room and towards the door. Marie was already standing on the upper landing, gesturing children back to their classrooms even as she started to ask what was going on. It was refreshing, Charlotte thought, to be in a house of women (and probably men) who were as ruthlessly practical as she could have wanted.  
  
"What's going on?" Marie called down. They could tell she was trying to keep a brave front for the children. It was equally apparent that panic was overtaking her.  
  
"I'm not sure," Mina said calmly, "But it can't be the ... creatures ... because they wouldn't knock at a door. Go back to the lessons..." She went to a box by the door where Charlotte could now see the speaking tube had led to. There was also a box there, and some sort of contraption with mirrors. She fiddled with it, seemed to look into something... and her eyes widened. "Gordie... what..."  
  
"Gordie...?"  
  
"Mina..." now they could hear the voice, a young man's voice, high and pitiful and terrified. "Mina, it's horrible, it's..."   
  
Mina wrenched all three doors open, dragging a young disheveled looking man in. He practically limped through the hallway into her arms, and at first Charlotte thought the man had been injured in some way... that is, until she saw that his foot had been mangled, twisted into a clubfoot. He looked pale as death, but whether that was his natural complexion or from sheer terror she didn't know.   
  
"What happened... Mrs. Tellman, would you please fetch the brandy... it's in the cupboard underneath the table in the library... Mrs. Pitt, if you would help me..."   
  
Somehow they managed to carry the shivering young man into the kitchen, which seemed a bizarre choice until Charlotte tasted the air and felt the warmth and realized why. It smelled of cinnamon and apples and comforting foods, reminding her of her own kitchen at home. Mina's arms wrapped around the boy as Gracie came pelting in with the brandy.  
  
"Not a full glass, just... yes, that's it."  
  
The young man she had called Gordie took a deep, shuddering breath, and the gulped down the brandy. "Oh god..." he murmured. "Oh god. Mina, they're back. They're all back, dozens of them. Hundreds of them."  
  
Behind them they heard a whimpering, soft noise. Marie stood in the doorway, white as death, as the young man in their arms. She darted forward and knelt down beside him, babbling in some strange language that Charlotte couldn't identify. Mina looked up at the other woman and Charlotte began to understand why they needed her and Gracie. If for nothing else, they needed the stability that women, care-givers with normal lives could provide.  
  
"I'll take care of things here," Mina murmured. "If you would go see to the children."  
  
Gracie nodded and darted upstairs. Charlotte was slower to act, standing back instead and watching the cluster of three comfort each other, like family... almost, she noticed with an atavistic shiver echoing a fear she didn't understand... almost like lovers.   
  
Charlotte went upstairs to mind the children with Gracie. Perhaps the woman had been right... perhaps this was something she didn't want to involve herself in. 


	8. Men of Science

It wasn't the dingy, stale air of the laboratory that (of all places) reminded Tom of an under-funded, worn out zoo. It wasn't the way something was growing on the microscope slides that probably hadn't ever been intended for study under a microscope. It wasn't even the clusters of cages that had once held animals, and were now conspicuously absent despite the piles and piles of food in the shed outside. He couldn't actually put his finger on it, but there was something downright unnatural about the whole collection of buildings.  
  
"Just a moment!"   
  
And there was something even more unnatural about the bumbling, cheerful old man in the laboratory coat and inch-thick glasses who was now shuffling towards them.  
  
"Ah... you'll be the men the government sent to collect me." He rubbed his hands together in an action that reminded Tom of a fly more than anything human. "Agent Sawyer, Agent Finn..." Both nodded. "Captain... Nemo, is it?" He peered at the Indian pirate through the glasses as though he thought he might see something through them that no one else had yet. The pirate shifted uncomfortably, already disliking the man. "Interesting. Interesting...."  
  
He cleared his throat and continued to look them over. "Dr. Jekyll, yes, I have read about your strange case... Mr. Gray, I don't believe I've had the pleasure. Inspector Pitt, Inspector Abberline... So Scotland Yard has an interest in this case as well? How curious..." Sebastian had been locked in his quarters and Tellman had been left on the ship, as no one had been sure how either would react. "And..." he stared at the floating trenchcoat and hat. Skinner, in a fit of pique, had flatly refused to wear any whiteface and had to be persuaded to wear clothing at all. Tom couldn't really say that it wouldn't have been handy to have an invisible spy running around making sure the doctor was who he said he was, but he'd been outvoted.  
  
"Your vision's fine..." Skinner said wearily.   
  
"Mr. Skinner. How ... interesting. I'd head of Griffin's formula, naturally... but I had also heard it had died with him."  
  
"Let's just say that that circumstances of his death were ... changed... and leave it at that, shall we?"   
  
Jekyll shifted his stance uncomfortably, hoping no one had noticed.  
  
Dr. Moreau stared at Skinner for a little while longer, then finally shrugged. "As you like... As you like."  
  
Tom choked. Dust flew, and everyone turned to look at him. He pulled his hand back from the shelf where he had been poking around through the papers, but not before Huck swatted him gently upside the head. "Sorry..."  
  
"Quite all right, Agent Sawyer... Quite all right." Dr. Moreau tittered, a strange noise that sounded more and more like madness to Tom. "I doubt you would be able to understand the notes at any rate... unless you have a more keenly scientific mind than I think you have...? No? Yes, of course... you are the investigators of crime, and I am the investigator of science..."   
  
Now just about everyone in the League was fidgeting uncomfortably, worried or startled by the man, with two exceptions. Nemo was entirely unflappable and Abberline, apparently, had been inured to madness by his long association with the strange Sebastian Kane.   
  
"And as investigators of crime, sir, we've come to ask you to donate your time and scientific expertise to the ongoing investigation of international... child kidnappers." Huck, no less intimidated by the giggling scientist than Tom, nevertheless managed to get out a polite invitation.   
  
"Oh? And why would a biologist specializing in animal research..." It came out with every syllable enunciated, a-ni-mal re-search. "Be of use to you in your investigation of kidnappers. Are they using dogs? Or... there was a case recently in the Strand involving a mix up between a child and a monkey..."   
  
Huck looked helplessly at Jekyll, their resident man of science.Tom just shrugged.   
  
"There are certain... indicators in tissue samples left by the kidnappers that they are... not entirely human." Henry temporized.  
  
Dr. Moreau's face darkened so rapidly and so far that Tom, Huck, and Jekyll all stepped back several paces, nearly behind the other four. Old as he was (and, from what Tom had read in his file, he had to be ancient), he looked capable of as much fury and destruction as Hyde, in a package as inoffensive as Jekyll.   
  
"So you came to me, thinking that I had something to do with this? You want to see my creations, do you? Interrogate my children? Well, let me tell you something, my good friends... you may think you know what it is that I do here, but you know nothing of what it is that I am creating! I have seen the beast in my microscope, and I have chained him. I have taken the devil out of the beast, and replaced it with the angel in the man. I have surpassed God's directive to be master over the animals and made them masters of themselves. And I have taught my children better than to be the sorts of base, vile creatures that man has since become!"  
  
By the end of the speech the doctor had flecks of spittle flying from his mouth, his eyes wide and bulging. Jekyll looked as though he might faint if Skinner hadn't been directly behind him, prepared to catch him if he keeled over. Tom and Huck were both standing on the balls of their feet, hands at the butt ends of their guns.   
  
To their surprise it was Abberline who stepped forward and slapped the doctor smartly across the face. "Control yourself, man," he snapped. "If we thought it was your creations that had been carrying out these kidnappings we would already have arrested you. It's your mind we need, not your animals." He wiped his hand off on a kerchief and looked the doctor up and down, disdainful. "Although if you've descended so far into senility perhaps our trip has been wasted."  
  
Tom gaped.   
  
The doctor blinked. His eyes seemed to clear, and he shrank back into himself. "Sorry... sorry. My apologies. I thought..." he shuffled backwards, heading out the door. "Never mind. I'm sorry."  
  
"Sir..." Tom reached out to touch the man's shoulder, and Moreau shrank away again. "We think your expertise might help us identify who or what is kidnapping these children. That's why we're here... not to persecute you in any way."   
  
"We'd like your assistance on the case," Pitt stepped forward, speaking gently and calmly. "Quite frankly, this is far beyond our normal beat. We're investigators, keepers of the peace. We're not scientists, biologists or chemists. We couldn't tell if the samples we took from the kidnapping sites are human or semi-human, our forensics teams at Scotland Yard and Special Branch aren't up to that sort of detection. And we have only a single scientist working on the case right now. We'd like a dozen, at least. Specialists in the field... the sorts of people who would know the right questions to ask." He approached the doctor slowly, hands out, trying not to make any threatening gestures.   
  
"I see..." the doctor said slowly. "Yes. Yes, I think I see. And of course you must have the best, the fastest, eh? To be able to save your children in time, you must find out all you can... yes. I see where you are going." Now that his morality and the integrity of his so-called children were not being called into question he had returned to the almost bumbling friendliness of earlier. The transformation was so abrupt it was frightening. "Very well... very well, then. Who am I to stand in the way of justice and, of course, the safety of a number of children."  
  
"Hundreds of children, sir." Pitt's face was grave, but it was clear that he was still pleading to the scientist's ego and what perhaps remained of his better nature. "This epidemic of kidnapping is world-wide, and it appears to have escalated only within the last few months."  
  
"I see... yes, I do see." The doctor straightened. "Very well! I will pack... I suppose we had better leave at once, if we are to arrive in..."  
  
"London." Tom supplied shortly, leaving it up to Nemo whether or not to disclose any information about his craft.  
  
"London? Yes, yes of course, we had better leave immediately. Shoo!" Dr. Moreau made abrupt flapping motions that had at least half of the League scurrying suddenly to get out of his way, as though madness or senility was contagious. "Shoo! Out! I must pack. Return in... one hour! Yes, an hour, that will be sufficient time."  
  
They filed out slowly, still looking at each other as though wondering if this was as good an idea as it had seemed a week ago. Tom and Huck, the last to leave, could still hear the doctor muttering to himself as he gathered things together on the desk.   
  
"Are you sure he's actually going to be useful?" Huck murmured.  
  
"It's not his usefulness that worries me... I've heard stories of Skinner's predecessor." Tom sighed, glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were really out of earshot before he said what was on his mind. "It's his defensiveness about his so-called children. Yeah, they probably didn't kidnap anyone... but what ... what's he been doing out there that he thinks we might think that?"  
  
Huck blinked. "Don't follow."  
  
"Think about it... he was defensive, really angry about us coming here and accusing him of kidnapping children. But he didn't sound surprised... he didn't sound as though it was unexpected that someone in the government might come here to shut him down, or worse. He actually sounded as though he'd expected that his children might get out and start doing... I don't know. Really terrible things."  
  
Huck stopped in his tracks and stared at his friends, then turned and looked a little ways down the hill at the small house surrounded by barns, silos, buildings. He looked around at the fences and the empty and half-empty bags of food. He looked back over at Tom, who shrugged.  
  
"Welcome to the League," he murmured wryly, and trotted off to follow the group.  
  
Huck stared at the house a little while longer before he turned and walked away.   
  
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Sebastian Kane paced up and down the corridors of the suite that he and Inspector Abberline unwillingly shared, tapping his walking stick in anger and frustration. Bad enough that he'd been kept prisoner for the past eighteen years. Worse still that his abilities, his skills had been hampered by the bastards Abberline had hired. The damned witches were keeping him locked up, a prisoner inside his own body. He had no idea where the bastard had gotten them. The only other magician of any sort in all of England that he could think of was Crowley, and that lad was barely out of his childhood phase of self-indulgence and pleasure...  
  
His face contorted into a hideous scowl at the thought. Magicians of that sort were the worst kind, giving a bad name to the whole breed.   
  
Commotion in the corridors... the others were back with their pet scientists. Those on the American continent, anyway; from what Sebastian had overheard in conversations they had at least two more stops to go before they returned to England, and a substantial amount of land travel to do as well. Of course, he would not be allowed off the ship. No one trusted him further than they could see him. Furious, Sebastian tried the doorknob again, prepared to jerk it off the door if he had to.  
  
The door came open directly, nearly braining him in the center of his forehead.  
  
He frowned suspiciously at it, then looked up. The well-dressed, young-looking chap with an aura about him that was so black he could barely be seen through it was leaning against the wall a little down the corridor, smirking.   
  
"The others are all up in the war room, discussing their next port of call. I thought you might like to stretch your legs."  
  
Sebastian's eyebrows arched upwards. "Out of the goodness of your heart? Please, Mr. Gray, I'm not so far gone as to believe that."  
  
Dorian shrugged. "Out of my perverse sense of whimsy, then. Or perhaps a shared sentiment that the others are a bit too high-handed with their morals?" He turned and started down the corridor, seemingly indifferent to Sebastian's further actions. After a moment the older-looking gentleman followed him.  
  
"I have heard rumors, but no one has actually related the story to me... what did you do to be regarded with such suspicion?"   
  
Dorian tilted his head at the other man, wryly amused that he of all people would be asking that particular question. "You really want to know?"  
  
Sebastian shrugged slightly. "Call it my own perverse sense of whimsy."  
  
"I betrayed the rest of the League for my own personal gain and well-being. I collected them all for a megalomaniacal madman and then attempted to blow them up after making my escape." He related the incident in those two brief sentences with the exaggeratedly bored tone of someone for whom the incident still held memories of suffering. "What hideous crime did you commit to be shackled to that old bastard?"  
  
"I killed several people to complete a magickal ritual to extend my life. Besides, they were whores. Women of loose morals and no importance, a symptom of the decay of society. I did the city a service and sent a much-needed message, written in letters of blood so that they would not fail to see."   
  
Dorian made a slight snickering noise. "Unfortunately I believe they did... London is no less steeped in its own juices than it was ..." he narrowed his eyes at the other man. "In 1888."  
  
"Yes, well. I was interrupted." Sebastian scowled again, fierce enough to make even Dorian step back and consider that maybe there was a reason the madman had been locked up in his rooms.  
  
"So that was you."  
  
"Yes."  
  
Dorian stopped in the hallway; out of politeness, Sebastian stopped and waited for him. The immortal looked the magician up and down, evaluating him on some scale that Sebastian couldn't quite discern... and, to be honest about it, didn't really care to either. He simply folded his hands along the pommel of his stick and waited for the other man to finish his evaluation.   
  
"Magic, you said?"  
  
They resumed the walk. "Magick," Sebastian corrected his pronunciation. "Alchemy, astrology... the rituals and practices that allow us to see and control forces outside of normal human abilities."  
  
Dorian shook his head. "I'm afraid you must be mad," he said, prepared to explain why he didn't believe the other man. Sebastian, however, only laughed.  
  
"You, a veritable Immortal, are telling me that you do not believe I have a practical knowledge of magick?"  
  
Dorian shut up.  
  
"There are strange forces at work, and they are all around you. The average, ordinary man or woman does not see them, does not believe in them, lives his or her life trapped in the existance of an utterly banal mind. For those of us certain few who, either though a family lineage or through fortuitous associations, have learned that there is more to the world than we can simply see or hear... we study how to manipulate it, how to turn the rules and laws of magick to our own ends."  
  
Dorian glanced over at the lecturing man who accentuated every point with a tap of his walking stick. Immortal he may have been, but this Sebastian was making him thoroughly uncomfortable with his obsessions and his strange ideas. The thought that he was having such a ludicrous conversation with the murderer of the East End did not help, although there had been rumors of strange events and rituals ever since Crowley had popped up with his ridiculous proclamations. And speaking of whom...  
  
"So you are a follower of that Crowley fellow..." he ventured.   
  
"That ignorant son of a motherless goat couldn't find his own arse in the dark with both hands and a compass," Sebastian snarled, back in the towering fury in which Dorian had found him. "He's a drugged and drunk pretender, a man who parades his addictions about as the means to a divine end."  
  
"You don't feel strongly about this at all, do you," Dorian murmured to himself. Fortunately the madman didn't seem to hear.  
  
"I follow a different path. A path of more... brutal efficiency than his path of corruption and degeneration. A more nobler path than his self-indulgence and his weak-minded decay of the flesh and the soul..."   
  
Sebastian waxed eloquent on that subject for the next fifteen minutes. It didn't seem to occur to him that there was any sort of a world outside of his own narrow view, extreme at both ends, with no middle ground. Dorian tried not to look too bored, actually rather afraid for... well, not for his life. But if Sebastian really was a magician... and he had to be, or else why would he be on this ridiculous trip in the first place... Dorian was sure the man could find all sorts of hideous fates and punishments for him that didn't involve dying.   
  
Besides, he was very sure that the madman would not approve of his former lifestyle in the slightest. No matter how much it might have been curbed since then by returning to take up with the League.  
  
Suddenly, and with a pang that was startling in its ferocity, Dorian missed Mina. He missed her biting sarcasm, her fierce mind... her intelligence and wisdom that was untainted by any form of psychological disorder or inner tragedy. Not that she herself was perfectly ordinary... but of all of them she had been the only one he could ever talk to without wanting to escape the room five minutes later. Their relationship had been a failure, true... not that it had ever been a proper relationship in the first place. But he had few enough friends left, fewer who truly knew who and what he was. And she was one of those rare few.  
  
And he had tried to destroy her.  
  
Annoyed with himself, Dorian slipped down a side passage and was gone with Sebastian in mid rant. The mad magician stared after him, trailing off into silence when he thought the immortal could no longer hear, eyes narrowed and thoughtful. Perhaps there was more to him than just the pitch-black aura with the consistency of tar. He had shown some real potential there, towards the end, when Sebastian had started running out of synonyms and energy, and Dorian had run out of patience.   
  
To be sure, the emotions behind the tirade had been genuine. Sebastian's lip still curled at the thought of the hideous waste of human life that made up the better part of the world. But, with his first experiment in public awareness turning into a dismal failure, he had opted to bide his time. His experiments had not, as Abberline thought, been a complete failure. He now had time to wait and see, time to outlast and outlive the annoying police inspector, and perhaps even the witches that worked for him. He did not, as the young Mr. Gray seemed to, have forever. But then, he didn't really need forever, and he enjoyed the sense of vulnerability, of humility, of his own frailty that remaining mortal gave him.   
  
Perhaps in exchange for the return of his own mortality, Dorian Gray could be persuaded to help him, if only to achieve a certain measure of freedom for them both.  
  
Sebastian smirked and made his way carefully back down the corridor, lest someone see him and report it to the Inspector. He didn't want his already dubious freedoms curtailed any further than they already were.   
  
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"Are you absolutely certain?"   
  
Nemo never would have thought it came down to this. That Dorian Gray, the man who had conspired to destroy his Nautilus with all his men and the League aboard, should warn him about a threat to the safety of the crew and passengers... it was unthinkable. And yet here they were, not an hour from the docks of Paris, heads together as they walked and discussed the possibility that a notorious serial killer was on board.  
  
"Well, no, he didn't exactly come out and say it in so many words. But it all fits... the Inspector's presence, the things he's said... his manner, the way he looks at..." Dorian shook his head. "Put it this way, Nemo, do you really want to take a chance? The man is obviously a lunatic."  
  
Nemo sighed. This was the absolute limit. It wasn't enough that he had a contingent of mad scientists aboard... not one, oh no. The first, Dr. Moreau, had not been the last of the babbling buggers to board his ship. Every doctor on the lists of the various government employees seemed to have something amiss in his brain. And now perhaps one of their own was equally disturbed, and homicidal to boot. No wonder Henry had retired.  
  
"Well, I'll keep an eye on him," Nemo said more loudly for the benefit of the others, ending the discussion before his headache could grow any worse. "Now, who was this man you said you thought we had missed?"  
  
Dorian shrugged. "The man's name is Philby, but it's not him we're after. Back when I was at university he started a rumor about a madman who claimed to have invented a device to travel through time."  
  
Nemo, Jekyll, and Pitt stopped in their tracks. Tom and Huck had to back-track to rejoin them. "A physicist," Henry said, frowning. "Dorian, what use is a physicist going to be? We're not dealing with some perversion of the laws of gravity."  
  
"Perfect," Pitt muttered, his temper fraying at the edges from having to deal with Tellman, Abberline, and all the strangeness of the Nautilus passengers. "Another insane scientist."  
  
"It's not the machine itself that I thought about," Dorian said with the patience and superiority of someone concealing the best for last. "It's the adventures Philby said the man had when he was... well, out of time."  
  
They resumed walking, slowly, more because Dorian had started towards the Rue de Peletier than out of any real desire to meet this man. "So all you have is the word of a man who may or may not have heard his ... teacher, I presume? Who may or may not be in his right mind." Nemo sighed. "Dorian, if this is another trick."  
  
Dorian rolled his eyes.  
  
"I think I heard of that story..." Henry frowned. "It was just being passed around at the university a year or two ago, among the students. Popular as a joke, but are you sure it has any bearing in fact? And apart from that, are you sure it isn't just the same old school legends that get passed down from generation to generation?"  
  
Dorian shrugged. "Look, all I know is what I was told. At the time Philby seemed quite genuinely terrified, but whether he was thinking of some monstrous beast from the past or of the sanity of his mentor, I have no idea. The story started with him, though, so you can rest assured that it's no older than I am." He smirked.  
  
Everyone, including Pitt (who was by now at least used to the antics of the League), rolled their eyes. "Well, that's a comforting thought, mate," Skinner muttered. "You're no older than dirt, you are. Freshest news this side of the fish market."  
  
Tom and Huck giggled. Dorian shot a glare in what he thought was the invisible man's direction.   
  
"Fable or fact, we're about to find out." Henry, for once, was at the head of the queue to knock on the door, teeming with scientific curiosity. Nemo remained at the back, arms folded, thoroughly skeptical of what they would encounter. Henry looked back over his shoulder to make sure they were all assembled.   
  
"Well, go on, then," came the voice from thin air.  
  
He took a deep breath and rapped sharply on the door, then stepped back hurriedly.   
  
"No visitors!" came a panicked voice after a few minutes. "No visitors... we can't have visitors here. Go away!"  
  
The League exchanged glances, and Dorian sighed irritably. "Philby, open the damn door. It's me, Dorian."  
  
There was a short pause, and then a small metal plate slid back to reveal a bloodshot eye with the familiar wrinkles of sleep deprivation around it. "Dorian? What do you want? Long way from London, aren't you?" The eye looked him up and down. "You can't be Dorian... you must be his son, sent here to drag the story out of me one more time so he can go back to Eton and lecture about it in some sordid study..."  
  
"I've aged well," Dorian drawled. "Let me in, Philby, or I'll go fetch the gendarmes and tell them about your lovely opium habit. As tolerant as Paris is about such behavior, they'll at least be forced to do a cursory inspection of your house, and I'll come in anyway. It's me and my friends, or me and the gendarmes. Your choice, of course. I'll be waiting, but not too long." He turned around and leaned on the doorframe, waiting.   
  
A moment passed, and then they heard the bolt slide back in the door, the sound of several locks opening. The crack of light that shone through revealed a rabbity man in the latter stages of middle age and the early stages of death by alcohol, who skittered at his own shadow and seemed more nervous than Jekyll.   
  
"Come in..." he muttered to the floor. "Come in... but be quick.. .he'll wake up shortly, and ..."  
  
"Philby!" a voice roared from upstairs. "What the blazes are you doing down there?"  
  
The rabbity man jumped about a foot into the air and scurried up the stairs. "Nothing! It's nothing. It's just the wind..."  
  
There was another of those looks exchanged between League members. Dorian, apparently used to this kind of behavior, only sighed and went upstairs, pushing Philby aside as he did so.  
  
"Dorian!" Philby reached out and plucked at the man's sleeve as he passed, but Dorian shook him off easily. "Please..." He turned to the rest of the League, who were standing there blinking at him, bemused. "Please, you have to leave. You have to leave now, before he comes down. It's for your own..."   
  
"What is this?"   
  
The quavering voice held more conviction and strength of will than Philby's, although the man had to be at least two decades his senior. Dorian gave what assistance he could to the ancient man who descended the stairs, but it was clear that his help was neither wanted nor needed.   
  
"I'm Dr. Pearce," he said quite calmly. "What can I do for you?"  
  
"We were interested in your time machine," Dorian said even as Jekyll stepped up to try and find a diplomatic way to come around to the subject. "Whether or not it really works, and whether or not you actually discovered whole new species with it."  
  
Tom sighed and turned as if to go. "Well, I guess we're not needed here," he drawled. Huck gently stopped him from actually walking out the door.   
  
"Are you now... young Gray, wasn't it?" Pearce smirked. "I should think you'd've discovered that for yourself, considering you haven't aged a day in fifty years or so. No, longer than that, hasn't it been?"  
  
Dorian didn't comment.  
  
Philby whipped around, as though he'd heard or felt something.   
  
"We'd like your help to solve a series of crimes," Pitt said, evidently feeling that someone a little more diplomatic had better take charge. "Quite frankly, they have the Special Branch, Interpol... the entire international police community baffled. Mr. Gray seemed to feel that you might have some special knowledge of the subject."  
  
"Indeed..." The old man's hard gaze fell upon Pitt and stayed there, as though seeing how long it would take the Inspector to flinch. "And you would be ... which? Special Branch or Interpol?"  
  
"Special Branch, sir," Pitt said calmly, unflinching.   
  
The old man cackled. Henry and Philby jumped, and Huck shivered. "Excellent, then! I will help you... on one condition. Indeed, it is a condition I must insist upon, or I won't be able to leave Paris much less travel to what you say... the scene of the crime."  
  
"And that condition is?"  
  
"I have a certain problem of my own with the police... if you would take care of it for me..." 


	9. Room to Breathe

There was something comforting about the way the sunlight streamed in through the window. It lit up the carpeting on the floor just right, just so that Marie and Gordie could see that the floor was intact. There were no openings, no tunnels or pitfalls, no way they could be reached and pulled down into the dank, dark hell they had once lived. It was comforting, and helped when they were curled up on the floor with their arms about each other, clinging to each other for support.  
  
"How many...?" Marie asked after one of the long silences that had peppered their conversation.  
  
"Many..."  
  
Gordie had been the next oldest, after her and Percy. He had been only a year younger than Percy, in point of fact, which was a bit of a good thing. It put him on something like an equal footing with her, meant that she could talk to him almost as an adult... albeit an adult who knew exactly what her terrors and fears were, having experienced them himself. If it had been one of the others she would have been put in the position of protector once again, and that would have been very hard.  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Katherine Stoker and him... uh... the baby. Jules. Herb and his parents..."  
  
Marie shuddered. She had been present for the birth of the baby, whose name she was also ashamed not to remember. It had been just before the League had rescued them all...  
  
"How..." she didn't ask the next question, but Gordie knew it nonetheless.  
  
"They had their heads up... on pikes. On..." The image was conveyed with the words, and both of them shuddered violently and hugged each other tighter.  
  
"What are we going to do?" Gordie asked after a little while. Marie took a deep breath and began to stroke his hair, as Henry had done for her, as Mina had done those first few, strange years.   
  
"They'll protect us," she said, not bothering to put a brave face on it since Gordie would know anyway if she did. "If we all stay close, they'll protect us. They're good at that." She thought of Henry, and the secret power he held in the form of Edward Hyde. She thought of Nemo's quiet   
  
intensity, his ferocity when it came to defending that which he loved. She thought of Mina's own inner beast, the power that she was too responsible to unleash recklessly. She thought of Tom, and his new friend Huck, and their easy-going steadfastness. She thought of Skinner and his quiet, protective presence, how she always felt safer when he was there, whether she could see him or not. She thought of all of them, wrapped herself and Gordie in the reassuring warm feelings they gave her, and hoped it would help. It seemed to. Gordie stopped shaking, anyway, and started to calm down.   
  
Now she could calm down, as well. Now that he wasn't telling her horrible things about their friends, she could pretend it was all going to go away, and that her League would come and protect them both.  
  
"Will they really?" Gordie asked. He didn't remember much about the League, having been hospitalized immediately after they had been rescued from the catacombs and then placed not long after.  
  
Marie nodded. "They will." Her perfect love and perfect trust in them translated through her words, settling around Gordie like a warm blanket. For a little while, everything was all right again.  
  
"Do you think they can?"  
  
Marie's mind frowned even as she tried to think of the right words for this particular question. Her mouth moved without her consent. "They're all very powerful in their own right. They all have their own gifts, like the Monsters, but they use them for better purposes. And they don't try to..." Her mouth balked at the phrase, but her mind conveyed it anyway. Both of them shuddered.  
  
"What powers?"  
  
Marie tried to explain. "Henry is very strong, but he doesn't want to be. He doesn't want to be mean either, or nasty, or not care about people. So he has someone else inside him do all that stuff for him, a man called Ned Hyde. He's very big and very mean, but he's never mean to me. Henry won't let him." As she spoke her words painted pictures in both of their minds, and Gordie shivered at the image of Hyde.  
  
"What else?"  
  
"Nemo's very smart. He's the most intelligent man in the world. He builds things, wonderful things. He built many of the things in this building. And he's very practical, but he loves everything very much. He doesn't want to hurt people and he doesn't want people to get hurt, but he isn't   
  
afraid of protecting the people he really loves."  
  
Gordie was quiet for a second. "And Percy?"  
  
Marie just smiled. After a bit, Gordie smiled too, sharing the secret.  
  
"Mina... she knows what it's like to be scared, and she knows what it's like not to want to be scared. She loves us all, and she'll fight for all of us. Tom... he has a new friend Huck..." her mind painted the picture for Gordie, so that he would know they weren't just friends. "Or I think it's   
  
an old friend, but he's new to me... they're just ordinary people. With guns. They know what's right and what's wrong and they'll help us because they love us and they want to make us happy. They want everyone to be happy."  
  
"Rodney..." she frowned. "Rodney is complicated. He's invisible, which means he can go anywhere without Above-people seeing him. It won't help with the Monsters. But... he's a good person. He'll do anything to make sure we're all safe... Me and the League and you and everyone. But he's very sad... because he's very lonely. People up here put a lot of store by what they can see, and since they can't see him, they don't care about him."  
  
Gordie frowned. "But what about ..." touching and smelling and hearing and tasting and thinking? Marie could hear it in his voice.   
  
It was oddly nice to be with someone from her childhood, one of her old clutch. But it also reminded her of what she was, things she almost would rather have forgotten. The League... humans all, except perhaps for Mina... they were so limited. So dependent on certain senses, if blinded and deafened they would be helpless.   
  
And yet she had almost forgotten that, living with them as she had. First with Mina and then, when the demands put upon her from the League had grown too great and Henry had expressed increasing desire to settle down, with Henry. Marie herself had never been permitted to accompany them on missions, or even indeed to know much about what the League did. Even now, when the mission primarily concerned her clutch and their captors, they had left her behind. They didn't know the half of what she could do, and were always surprised when she seemed to know things, like when Skinner was in the room, or whether or not Tom was armed.   
  
Bred to be the strongest, the most talented, Gordie and Percy and Marie saw the world in very different ways than their surrogate families. Bred of non-humans, or preter-humans, there was always that faint reminder that they were different from everyone else around them. Marie had almost been able to forget, even with the occasional visits from Percy. It was both a blessing and a curse that Gordie's now-constant presence reminded her.  
  
She sighed. "They haven't yet learned how to... be aware of their other senses. They're still..." she trailed off, her voice down to almost a whisper. "It makes life for Rodney very hard..."   
  
Gordie's eyes narrowed at her, as though he saw something in her face or heard something in her tone that she had missed. But all he asked was. "So, how does he smell?"  
  
She giggled. "Spicy... like cinnamon and nutmeg." Gordie giggled too. .  
  
"Marie..." his face grew serious again. "If they don't understand... if they haven't even noticed you... how can they help? How can they..." he winced, and avoided the subject.  
  
"They're collecting people to help them understand. They're really quite clever, in their own way. And they have powers, too. They're not without their own resources. Ned..." she made a face. "Edward. Henry prefers me not to be too familiar... he can see things, smell things, hear things like we do. It'll be enough."  
  
"But... what if it's not enough? We're going to have to tell them, eventually."  
  
Marie shook her head, violently, denying it. "We can't. We can't tell them. Telling them will make it real, it'll make them find us. They can't find us."  
  
"But Marie..." Gordie took a deep breath. "They've already found us."  
  
"I know..." she murmured, trying not to think about it, although the memory started to choke her and overwhelm her. "I know."  
  
She shuddered, and this time he hugged her, tightly, rocking them both back and forth in the sun until the shaking passed. Gordie stroked her hair, trying not to think about it, trying not to remind her of those days they all hoped were long past them. Marie sat, huddled, and stared out the window at the impossibly bright day. They weren't being forced back underground. Not yet, anyway.   
  
"So... who's this Edward person?" Gordie said finally. "I don't remember any Edward ..."  
  
Marie sat up a little, smiling slightly. "Henry tries to keep him from me," she started, "He thinks I'll get hurt. Really, Edward's quite nice. He doesn't like to bother with any of the fancy manners ... that's what he calls them, fancy manners... or polite ways that Henry likes. And he can be very mean. But he's just angry a lot... and he's very big, bigger than any of ... any of them. If it comes down to a fight, he'll be the one to hide behind."  
  
"Because he can see and smell and hear them?"  
  
She nodded. "And because he's the only one out of all of them... even Mina... who knows what has to be done."  
  
Marie was still thinking about Gordie's words long after fallen asleep on her bed and she'd been summoned down to a late night conference with Mina, Mycroft, and Orlando. There was a copious amount of brandy, most of which seemed to have been consumed by Mycroft, and someone had laid out sandwiches. Not, Marie was thankful to see, the lady-like cucumber or cress or something equally light sandwiches Henry insisted on making for her, but good and   
  
hearty sandwiches with meat, cheese, and other forms of solid, non leafy food. Mina's influence, most likely. Marie had never eaten like a lady when under her auspices and roof, but she had always eaten well.  
  
"How is Gordie?" was the first thing that Mina asked, although her face was completely impassive and registered no emotion of any kind. Marie still could feel the waves of concern coming off of her.  
  
"Sleeping..." she said, curling up on a stool next to the woman and wolfing down a sandwich as though she hadn't eaten in weeks.   
  
"Is he all right?" Mycroft rumbled. Marie delicately wiped her fingers and face with a napkin and replaced it on the tray in place of the sandwich.  
  
"He's terrified," she said simply, and not for the first time she wished they were as receptive to the pictures in her mind as the rest of her friends and family. "Our brothers and sisters are dying, and the creatures we thought would never find us again, have. But it's all right. I told him we would protect him."  
  
Orlando looked a little confused. Mina must not have told them about Marie and the others. Then again, even Marie hadn't really told the League every little thing about her and the others. "We?" Mycroft asked sharply, probably wondering if the new people were included.  
  
"Mina, and Henry, and everyone..." Marie tucked her feet under her skirts and assumed a more ladylike pose, even though Henry wasn't there, because she knew he would appreciate it.  
  
"Oh." He was silent for a second and then, leaning forward and putting on what Marie suspected was a patronizing expression, he patted her hand. "Marie, are you sure you wouldn't like to tell us what happened? We can help you a lot better... all of you... if we know exactly..."  
  
She shook her head. The words were in his mind before he spoke them, and she knew what he was going to say. "Don't!" she yelped, more sharply than she meant to. "Don't ask me. You can't ask me, and I can't tell you. If I tell you..."   
  
Everyone was staring at her. She swallowed, hard.  
  
"They'll hear me... If I talk about them, they'll hear me. They..." she took a deep breath. "They're not like you. They're more like... like Rodney. Or Mina. Or Ned..."  
  
"Ned?" Mycroft frowned. Mina threw him a glance that had a good deal of significance behind it, and although his eyes widened he didn't ask further.  
  
""Edward..." Marie corrected herself. They liked it when she called him Edward, she reminded herself. She'd told Gordie not a few hours ago. "They have... specialties. Powers... it doesn't do to talk about them, because they can hear you from miles away. Especially the fear. When you're scared, you're... louder." Her hands sketched frustrated pictures in the air, as though she could put the thoughts into their heads through making designs with her hands. Orlando and Mycroft frowned, but Mina...  
  
"Marie... are you saying they can read your thoughts?"  
  
She shook her head slowly. They were all so caught up in seeing... it wasn't a good way to describe it. "They ... not read. Not exactly. But they know thoughts, and feelings. More feelings than thoughts, really. And if we think about them too much..." she shuddered, and tried to put any other thoughts into her head besides the memories of Underground. Thoughts of the League. She would protect herself with thoughts of her new family. She felt Mina's arms slide around her, pulling her close, then Orlando knelt beside them both.  
  
"Well, that's a fine mess," Mycroft hemmed, clearly uncomfortable with the display of emotion. "So ... what are we to do then? Marie, are you sure you won't..."  
  
"I understand something about this sort of thing, Mycroft," Mina said calmly. "It would likely be better for her.. for all of us... not to say anything."  
  
Mycroft grumbled, but eventually he did subside. Marie took advantage of the moment to look up at Mina. "Is there any word from the Nautilus?"  
  
Mina chuckled indulgently. "Nothing beyond the regular reports. They've collected their scientists without mishap so far, which means they should be home in another ten days. Then you'll have Percy all to yourself for a little while."  
  
Marie nodded. It wasn't as reassuring as it should have been, though.  
  
Orlando stroked her hair. "You've survived this long, cherie," she said in perfect but antiquated French, which made Marie stare, "You'll survive worse. That which does not kill you makes you stronger. Trust me... I know."  
  
Mina frowned thoughtfully, and something seemed to pass from one woman to the other, but Marie didn't catch it.   
  
"Do you think we can expect more children to show up at our doorstep?" Mina asked, returning to her chair, business like once again.  
  
"I don't know. Possibly, if the others can get away. Gordie said at least three others were dead..." she shook her head, swallowing hard, thinking of what would become of them. No... she couldn't think about that. "It's very likely that ... we're the only survivors."  
  
Silence met that statement, and for a long moment the only movement in the room was the slow puffing of smoke from Mycroft's pipe.  
  
"But..." he said finally, and his voice sounded more gravely than usual. "There were dozens of children. Thirty, forty at least."  
  
"And there are hundreds of them!" Marie slapped her hand on the arm of Mina's chair, making the other three jump. "They've spread out from the catacombs... they've gone beyond Paris. They've made it across the Atlantic. They're everywhere. They've spread everywhere, and they can find each one of us and hunt us down and kill us..." her voice choked off as her mind rebelled, shutting itself down in self-defense so they wouldn't hear her panic and find her. More importantly, so they wouldn't find Mina, or Orlando. Or any... god... Any of the children sleeping peacefully upstairs. Orlando's arms closed about her sympathetically; she permitted the embrace, although she suddenly wished for one of her clutch to be with her, someone who would have understood.   
  
"But... why are they after you?" Mina frowned, trying to be gentle. "What is it about you and Percy that is so special?"  
  
Marie could only shake her head, holding the memories of Skinner and Hyde in the front of her mind like a shield.  
  
Orlando sighed. "Marie, why don't you go to bed... we'll discuss what's to be done and see what you think in the morning, all right?" Marie started to shake her head, but the older woman was surprisingly firm. "Come on... it'll all look better in the morning. It always does."  
  
Under protest, the girl allowed them to lead her upstairs and to one of the guest rooms. She allowed Mina and Orlando to help her into her nightgown, tuck her in, and kiss her goodnight. Mina hovered in the doorway, watching Marie go through her usual evening routine: a hundred strokes of the brush through her hair, a brief splash of water over the face, the prayer Henry had taught her. Finally Mina returned downstairs to the others. Marie waited until she was sure they wouldn't hear her, then took the candle and crept into her own room, where Gordie was sleeping.   
  
Sleepily, he moved over in the bed and made room for her. They slept, huddled in each other's arms, as they had done so many years ago.   
  
Charlotte Pitt sighed as she wended her way through the corridors and desk clerks at Special Branch. Years of marriage to a skilled and rapidly rising policeman had taught her, over time, how to deal with the bureaucracy of the London police force. But when he had finally been permanently moved over to Special Branch...   
  
She sighed. She'd never really gotten the hang of dealing with the insular silence of the unit.   
  
Gracie, on the other hand, seemed almost in her element. She asked no questions except the very specific, very blunt ones she wanted answers. And she would not stop until she got those answers, no matter who she had to yell at to do it. With her tiny figure and gentle appearance, no one expected her to push herself forward with any amount of ferocity. Charlotte privately thought that they were admitted more due to the sheer surprise of the desk clerk rather than any real right to be there.  
  
The same trick wouldn't work with Narraway. He had been dealing with Pitt, Tellman, and their wives for over ten years now. In fact, when he didn't look up at their entrance, Charlotte got the distinct impression that he had been waiting for them.  
  
"What is it this time?" he asked, in a perfectly blunt and almost bored tone of voice.   
  
"It's about the orphanage." Gracie, a little relieved by the man's bluntness, saw no reason to bandy words about herself. "We think it needs more protection than it's got."  
  
Narraway did look up at that, and blinked. "The orphanage has the protection of the League, and all their... singular talents. I'm sure that your husbands have told you all about it, even though they weren't supposed to."  
  
Charlotte and Gracie exchanged a guilty look.  
  
"All of the abductions have been occurring far from the district... really, far from the city. There's been no suspicious activity for miles. What could the orphanage need more protection from?"  
  
"There was... an incident the other night." Charlotte wasn't sure, really, what to call it. But when she had stopped by early yesterday morning with the increased need to do something, anything to help... "One of the children..."  
  
Narraway pulled chairs out from along the wall, his face registering the sinking feeling that it was going to be a long story. "Here... have a seat, why don't you..."   
  
"Thank you..." They all sat down, and Charlotte took a breath. "Are you familiar with the facts of the case that brought Marie Harker to her foster mother's doorstep...?"  
  
Narraway nodded. "The abductions in Paris, yes, and the subsequent rescue of thirty seven children from the catacombs. I'm familiar."  
  
"One of those children arrived at the orphanage the other evening. He was in considerable distress... although he himself was not wounded, he told Mrs. Harker and the rest of the folk at the orphanage that several of the other children were dead. That they, in fact, were the most likely target once ... all of the other children were killed."  
  
Narraway's expression didn't change.   
  
"So..." Gracie said when no one responded for several minutes. "We come to find out what you mean to do about it."  
  
Narraway sighed. "Frankly, Mrs. Pitt, Mrs. Tellman... Special Branch feels there isn't much we can do."  
  
"What?" Gracie, in her outrage, shot straight to her feet.  
  
"Calm down, Mrs. Tellman. It's got nothing to do with me, for one thing. Or, really, anyone in Special Branch."  
  
Now Charlotte was just confused. "Excuse me?"  
  
Narraway sighed and seemed to slump in his chair in a posture of defeat. It made Charlotte very nervous, especially since they hadn't asked him for anything more than he could give. "The initial investigation alone uncovered reports of a widespread organization, coherent enough to carry out abductions and hold children in as many as ten cities. Worse, some reports that will never see the light of day outside this room..." He glared at each of the women in turn as if to intimidate them into compliance. "Have indicated that these abductors are... well. Something outside the natural realm of what we are prepared to deal with."  
  
Charlotte thought back to what she knew of the League, what Mina had told her of the most recent group of enemies. Her mind conjured up hideous pictures for her, of what could be lurking under the streets, in the Thames, just out of sight, waiting to snatch her, or Jemima, or Daniel up at the least likely moment...  
  
"It's not likely," Narraway said, more gently, as if he knew what they were thinking. "But it's also not likely that increased patrols will be able to do anything. We're keepers of the peace, protectors of the public good. We're not the sorts of people that the League is."  
  
"There's got to be something you can do," Gracie insisted. "More men on the streets. The army?"  
  
Narraway chuckled wryly. "We don't control the army, Mrs. Tellman. If we did, there might be a great deal less trouble from the Fenians, for one." He sighed heavily. "I'll see what I can do, but I make no promises. The Nautilus is supposed to return to port in one week. They'll have the protection of the entire League, then."  
  
Charlotte nodded and stood, sensing that the interview was at an end. "You will at least increase the patrols?" she pressed. "Put more men on the streets." Something to keep the children from ... she couldn't even think it.  
  
Narraway nodded slowly. "I'll see what I can do. Really, you might want to think about speaking to Mrs. Harker about moving the children in the orphanage to a different facility, at least for the time being. They'd be a lot safer away from ..." he didn't finish, but both women knew what he was talking about. Gracie nodded slowly, looking determined. Charlotte suddenly didn't look forward to that argument.  
  
"We'll speak with them," Gracie promised, although it sounded a little more like a threat.   
  
"Thank you for your time," Charlotte said, smiling.  
  
"Of course" Narraway's tone was ironic, knowing full well that if he hadn't told the two women what they wanted to know they would have found out some other, possibly less careful way. He sighed again, and slumped back into his chair as they left. 


	10. Due Consideration

Although it was far too hot in the open sun for black leather, Skinner betrayed no discomfort as he leaned his elbows on the front rail of the deck of the Nautilus. His white-face was impeccably smoothed over his features, his hat and glasses firmly seated upon his face. He bore no discernible expression, not unlike the stone-faced Indian captain who stood beside him. They watched the water pass around them   
  
"How long have we been on the water this time?" Skinner asked. The question in and of itself wasn't unusual; he asked the same thing two or three times a week when they were in the field. Mostly, Nemo suspected, out of an ingrained desire to tease and annoy. This time, however, there was a different tone to his voice, a strange note that caused the Indian captain to give his fellow a questioning look.   
  
"Three weeks or so. Why do you ask?"  
  
Skinner only sighed in reply. It wasn't terribly enlightening.   
  
"Is there something wrong?" It was as close to solicitous as Nemo ever got, and raised Skinner's eyebrows into what would have been his hairline if he'd bothered to have hair.   
  
"Something..." he sighed again. "Do you ever get the feeling, sometimes, that we're getting a mite too old for this sort of thing?"  
  
Nemo's lips twitched in his beard, one of the very few visible signs of amusement he ever gave. "Many times in the last twenty years."  
  
Skinner chuckled. "Sorry, mate. Sometimes I forget you're a good decade or so older than the rest of us, at least." He thought back to their American members. "More than that, in some cases."  
  
"And to answer your question, yes. I have, of late, been pondering my own retirement." Nemo's own thoughts turned inward, his face going distant. "I find I do not have the energy I once had, and the causes I once had great passion for now seem more like the follies of youth, great world-changing goals that perhaps are better left to the young. I find... more and more..." he trailed off, not entirely sure what he was meaning to say.   
  
"You're getting jaded," Skinner said, and it was only half in jest. "You're starting to wonder if everything we're doing is actually doing any good. If all this running around in circles is really going to help anyone..." his hand flexed and clenched, almost as though he wanted to curl it around a bottle. "I didn't really think it would happen after seven years, but I guess... bloody hell, I don't even know what I'm trying to say anymore, but... I think we're all just tired."  
  
Nemo didn't look at him, unsure. The invisible man had a very good point, incoherent as it was, and it hit closer to home than he would have liked. He thought about bringing the point up the next time the League met, if Skinner didn't. But at the same time he could hear all too well what each of them would say. Tom would suggest that they just needed a vacation, and then suggest some perfectly outlandish place where they would get into more trouble than they were escaping. Mina would most likely be the most sensible of the lot, and suggest simply some rest at home... except that Nemo was not entirely sure he had a home to go to anymore.   
  
Besides, there was that other matter. At the current juncture Nemo had no more idea of what he wanted to do than he had when he first made the bargain, and keeping busy meant he didn't have to think about it. Or, given their dangerous lifestyle, quite possibly meant that the entire situation would be moot.   
  
"Penny for your thoughts?"  
  
He'd almost forgotten about the man whose observations had started his whole train of thought. "I was wondering... what the rest of the League would say to your proposal."  
  
Skinner chuckled, glancing at the Captain out of the corner of his eye. "I wasn't aware that I had proposed anything." He turned his gaze back to the sea and hummed thoughtfully. "Tom has, as you mentioned before, the energy of youth. He'll want a vacation and then back to work like always. Mina... well, none of us know how old she is, do we, really?"  
  
"She has not yet outlived a mortal span of life, if that's what you mean. There are birth records, and they are within this past century." Nemo did take his point, however. There was no telling how long the woman would live. She had not aged visibly in the seven, nearly eight years now that they had known her.   
  
"So it's just the two of us, then." Skinner chuckled. "Not exactly what I'd've expected."  
  
"And Henry," Nemo reminded him.  
  
"Henry wore out his enthusiasm for the League two years ago, mate. Not that I can blame the man, after all. He's got two lifetimes' worth of aging in that scrawny body of his." Skinner frowned slightly. "Maybe he deserves the rest."  
  
"We all do." Nemo sighed. "Unfortunately the world does not always permit us that rest."  
  
Skinner turned and leaned his elbows and back on the rail, suddenly exhausted from staring out at all that emptiness, all that vast expanse of sea. "It's a hell of a job, mate... we get to run around and save the world from all sorts of dangers, and most people don't even know we exist. Or that they've ever been in danger at all... or at least they shouldn't, if we've done our job right. For most of us, retirement isn't exactly an option... I believe you're the only one out of the lot who's independently wealthy."  
  
Nemo chuckled, a cold and empty sound. "Believe me, my friend, retirement is the least of my worries at the moment."  
  
Skinner looked at him quizzically for a second but decided not to question the background of that very odd statement. "Anyway..." he started, and then seemed to forget what he was going to say. "So. ... er. Any plans?"  
  
The Captain sighed, heavier and more forlorn than Skinner seemed to have expected from him... really, worse than he had expected from himself. "I have no idea what I would like to do next."   
  
The invisible man stared at him. It was not an answer he heard from the Captain very often, and the sound of his voice shook his friend deeply. He didn't have an answer for the Captain, and eventually Nemo sighed again and turned back to watching the sea, gently shutting Skinner out of whatever dark thoughts he might be having. The invisible man watched him a little longer, than disappeared below decks. Some moods were better left to the solitary.   
  
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Crystal decanters clinked gently against tumblers. The murmur of the engines and the distant roar of the ocean was obscured by the sound of the Victrola. The lamps, although dimmed, somehow seemed to penetrate every corner of the room with a soft and reassuring light. Everywhere there was the smooth texture of mahogany, or the smooth feel of a good cognac sliding down a much-abused throat.   
  
"The trick is in the distillation..."   
  
The French constable had turned vintner in his declining years, after a tragedy he wouldn't speak of. The other two, with their own misfortunes, knew better than to say anything. Instead they had been talking of food, of wine, and of old cases and friends long gone. It was interesting what the three had in common, being from similar times and similar backgrounds. Pitt and Abberline had never worked together, although they had crossed paths briefly on a later investigation of the Ripper murders. The Inspector Javert, although long retired, had his own stories to tell.  
  
"Does it ever strike you, sometimes, that the world is going straight to hell in a handbasket?" Javert picked up the cognac and sipped a little, his accent thickening and blurring his words with the drink.  
  
Abberline sighed. "Every time I am dragged back into service by some act of Parliament. Although this time it was that bastard Narraway's fault. And you too, indirectly," he gestured with his glass at Pitt, who looked startled.   
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"If you hadn't discovered all that Whitechapel business, Narraway would never have known of it. And if he hadn't known of it he wouldn't have known to drag me out of my comfortable retirement to play nursemaid to a deranged and depraved magician."   
  
Javert frowned. "What is this?"  
  
Abberline sighed again. "You are familiar with the Ripper murders, correct? The brutal killings that terrorized the East End several ... good God, it must have been nearly twenty years ago..."  
  
Pitt nodded with amusement, still young enough to know what twenty years meant. "Nearly that."  
  
"At any rate..." Abberline frowned for a moment, clearly wondering about the propriety of his revealing so many secrets to a man of whom he knew very little. "Well, it can't matter now. Most of those involved are dead, and Pitt, you already know." He straightened a little in his chair, taking on the pose of a schoolteacher instructing a shamefully ignorant pupil. "What is less well known is this: There was an underlying order to the Ripper killings, a conspiracy to bend and twists the delusions of a madman to the ends of the English crown."  
  
Javert's eyes were wide, scandalized and disbelieving. "The English church would condone such savage butchery?"  
  
Abberline snorted. "More than condone, its immediate servants would have carried out the savage butchery, as you call it, had we not found a suitable candidate. In order to save face, you see."  
  
Javert scowled. In his own way, the English policemen were rapidly discovering, he could be a particularly moral man. "What cause could be so great that it would require the mutilation of women? Whores, I grant you, but..."  
  
"A scandal that could rock the faith the country has in their prince. The poor man had married a Catholic girl, you see, in a Catholic church. There were ... I believe there still are..." He looked at Pitt, who shrugged helplessly. "Er. Well, there were at the time still laws on the books stating that any prince who converted to the Catholic church was invalidated for the throne. The whores who died were the witnesses to the marriage. The girl herself was remanded to a mental institution for the criminally insane and her daughter was nearly run down by the coachman who was forced to witness it all."  
  
Pitt shuddered, remembering the awful circumstances that had surrounded his discovery of the conspiracy. "What did happen to her? Tellman was never able to find out."  
  
Abberline shrugged. "No one knows. It's generally assumed that she died in the squalor of the East End, or is living out some life of horrible drugery."  
  
There was a long silence in the room, broken only by the warbling of the Victrola and the sound of glasses clinking thoughtfully against the table. No one had anything to follow up with that horrible tale of mutilation and conspiracy; no one really wanted to, either.  
  
"Do you think..." Pitt said suddenly, startling both men. "Sorry. Do you think that you would have caught him, had there not been a conspiracy about? I mean, if you hadn't been ...." He groped around for a term to describe it. "Nudging him into the murders, do you think you would have been able to catch him?" His own patch, the Bow Street station at the time, was far from Spitalfields. He had been transferred there years after the Ripper murders.  
  
Abberline sighed heavily. "I doubt it. Many of the leaps and bounds that Scotland Yard is making now in the areas of catching criminals weren't available to us then. And even so, all we really had to go on were witness reports. He left nothing of himself at the scenes of the crime... obviously, he said it was for magical purposes..."  
  
"Here, do you really believe that man was working some sort of magic?" Javert interrupted. "That is the part that seems the most incredible to me. Have you ever seen him accomplish something that is so out of the ordinary as to call it magic?"  
  
Pitt looked at the floor, and Abberline turned his head very carefully and very slowly to stare at the former French constable with a dark and annoyed gaze. "Myself? No. I have never seen his visions, or learned his secrets, or indeed heard anything to indicate that he has or could have performed any sort of feat we would call magical..."  
  
"Well, then..."  
  
"Except," Abberline raised his voice ever so slightly. Pitt winced. "That, in the twenty odd years I have known the man. In all that time... he has never appeared to age so much as a day. The way you see him now, sir, is the way he has appeared for the last score of years. Now tell me... what is a man who does not age, but some sort of worker of magic?"  
  
Javert opened his mouth, shook his head, and took a drink of his cognac rather than risk further ire from the English policeman. "I have no quarrel with you, sir. If you say you have witnessed his lack of aging over the years with your own two eyes, I will believe you. But I still find it difficult to believe in this so-called League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when I have yet to see anything out of the ordinary myself."  
  
Pitt shook his head slightly, amused and utterly disarming with his chuckle and smile. "Wander about the corridors a little bit, Monsieur Javert. If you can located Mr. Rodney Skinner, ask him to show you what he really looks like without the white face and coat. You'll have your out of the ordinary. It's just a matter of looking in the right place."  
  
"And not seeing, in Skinner's case," Abberline muttered, which brought a weightier laugh from Pitt.  
  
"I don't understand..." Javert frowned, a little put out by what he saw as needless exclusionism. Abberline and Pitt exchanged glances.  
  
"You will..." Abberline muttered. "Believe me, my new friend. You will."  
  
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"I will not!"  
  
"Oh, come on, Tellman. It's good clean fun..." Huck wiped sweat from his dripping brow with the already sodden towel, dropping it into a small basket on the floor and pulling another from the stack on the bench. "Well, good sweaty fun, anyway."  
  
The two Americans were taking advantage of the brief lull and the facilities aboard the Nautilus to get some exercise. Having grown tired of chasing each other around the corridors and having abuse heaped upon them by the various other guests, they'd decided to hold impromptu games of football in one of the rooms that had been intended to be for hosting guests. Nemo had acquiesced to the request to convert it into a gymnasium largely out of a desire to keep them out of his hallways, but also recognizing the need for passengers and even crew to engage in some recreational physical activity.   
  
"It's..." Tellman faltered. He couldn't very well say it was bloody undignified and have them rib him about being a 'stiff-ass Brit,' as he'd heard them call Abberline. But he most definitely didn't want to join in a game that looked to get his teeth bashed out or his shins bashed in. "It's indecent."  
  
Tom snorted and kicked the ball across the room, bouncing it off the opposite wall and catching it neatly. Nemo, with not altogether remarkable foresight, had removed the glass and tiling from the wall and left only the sturdy marble. "Give it a rest already, okay? You sound like ... that crazy man... Sebastian."  
  
Huck aimed a kick at his friend's shins, entirely too aware of his friend's propensity for tactlessness. Tellman's face went stone cold.  
  
"I am nothing like that... that..."   
  
"Monster?" Huck suggested cheerfully. "Psychopath? No one's suggesting you are. Right Tom?"  
  
Tom grumbled.   
  
The police inspector and the American agent exchanged glances, deciding that there would clearly need to be some sort of compromise before Tom Sawyer opened his mouth and planted his foot firmly in it. Again.  
  
"I'll just watch," Tellman said after a second, settling down on the bench. "Besides, I've no idea how you Americans play rugby anyway."  
  
Huck laughed. "Well, we call it football, for one thing. Come on, lazy." He pulled Tom to his feet. "You're not going to win any points by sitting around."  
  
Tellman watched them race back and forth across the floor, slamming into each other with such force that he was actually quite surprised there weren't more broken bones or bloody noses involved. It seemed very like rugby, only without the brutish elegance that characterized the very British sport. The key seemed to be giving the largest person on either side a ball and standing back. Being as neither of the two Americans was noticeably bigger or stronger than the other, the game went back and forth with no clear winner in sight.  
  
"So, what do you think Sebastian did, anyway?" Tom was speaking more to Huck than to the Englishman, but it was the Englishman who responded.  
  
"Three weeks on the ship and you don't know?" Incredulity laced all through his voice. "Is it general policy of American agents not to know who they're going into the field with?"  
  
Tom caught the football and glared at Tellman. "I try not to pry into the lives of psychopathic killers, if that's what you're asking."  
  
Tellman addressed his next question to Huck. "Don't you know who Abberline is?"  
  
Huck frowned thoughtfully. "I heard the name before, but honestly I think it was from something before my time. The ..."  
  
"The Ripper murders."  
  
Tom dropped the ball.   
  
Tellman sighed. "Abberline was the second Inspector who took charge of the Ripper murders. When they stopped, he stopped investigating, but not because he's caught the culprit as everyone thought. It was because he'd known all along who the person was... he'd helped cover up the real murderers, and the murders stopped only because they'd run out of victims."  
  
The two Americans blinked at him, astonished. Tom frowned. "I thought ...." He closed his eyes, clearly trying to remember something from very far back in his past. "I thought ... okay, never mind. But I remember everyone saying they never caught the killer. But... the Ripper killed prostitutes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there still hundreds of prostitutes in London?"  
  
Tellman sighed. "Unfortunately, yes. But it was never about prostitutes." He paused. "Well, it was. But the man who wielded the actual blade... Sebastian... was directed by someone who wanted him to kill those specific prostitutes."  
  
Huck stared. "Does Sebastian actually know about all of this?"  
  
"I don't think anyone knows what that madman believes, or thinks. Certainly I don't." Tellman shuddered. "I don't want to, either."  
  
Tom actually quirked a smile at that. "Maybe that's one of the hazards of hanging around immortals."  
  
Huck blinked. "Immortals?"  
  
"Sebastian. Dorian. We've got a lot of them on the ship, at least it seems like it. Then again, could just be that we've never been around so many people who don't age before."  
  
Tellman frowned. "Dorian? Mr. Gray? I thought..." he trailed off. Although he had, of course, read the brief that had accompanied Dorian's conditional release to the custody of the League, he wasn't sure how much of it he actually believed. An invisible man running around was one thing, but this...  
  
Tom nodded. "The painter's dead, so we can't ask him how he did it, but somehow Dorian managed to commission a portrait from someone who painted more than just pictures. As long as that portrait exists, he can't die. He was part of the original League, till he turned us all in to the Fantom and tried to blow us out of the water." The American was smiling, but it was a smile that was full of teeth. Huck only winced and rubbed his stomach where the nearly fatal wound had been.  
  
Clearly, they both still harbored ill sentiment towards the enigmatical Mr. Gray. 


	11. Next Wave

Both Gordie and Marie woke up from screaming, writhing nightmares that day. Neither of the children had been getting any sleep, and Mina was starting to count the days until the Nautilus returned. Everyone had been too on edge lately... even the children at the orphanage were starting to feel it. There were more fights than usual, or so Marie said. There was a great deal less laughter, less playing. Orlando and Charlotte helped as best they could, tending the children so that Marie could catch a few hours of sleep here and there. None of it seemed to help, though. The two survivors had become listless, depressed, enjoying neither food nor drink. Gordie in particular went around composing morbid poetry and then insisting on reading it to everyone aloud. This went on until Jemima finally took to suffering through it, for which Mina was profoundly grateful. Jemima Pitt seemed as indomitable as her mother, and certainly more stubborn than Gordie. If she was determined not to be drawn down by his poetry, it would be so.  
  
"Do you think perhaps we should separate them?" Orlando asked late one evening, when the two young survivors had retired upstairs to their nightmares and the three women were sitting in the parlor.   
  
"No..." Charlotte spoke up before Mina could, her voice positive and full of the rigors of experience. "They seem to be drawing strength from each other, and certainly none of us can have the slightest idea of what they truly went through. Let them have what comfort they can from each other, even if it gives them nightmares. With any luck, the Nautilus will be back soon..." there was more than a little wistfulness in her voice. She wondered if this was what Thomas felt like when she took trips to Paris, or Italy, or other far-away locations with her sister Emily.  
  
Mina nodded, settling back in her chair and frowning. "I do wish it didn't give them nightmares, though. It's as though they were terrified for their lives... and Marie is just as terrified to tell us anything about it, which..."  
  
"Puts a rather different spin on things." Mycroft Holmes waded into the parlor, drink already in hand. "Good evening, ladies."   
  
There were nods of greeting all around, and Mycroft had settled his portly frame into a chair and taken another good sip before any of them ventured to ask the question.   
  
"Is there any word from the Nautilus?" Charlotte, of course.   
  
"Nothing out of the ordinary. Progress reports, of course: they are well and they have a veritable menagerie of scientists and brilliant minds aboard. As well as some truly disreputable characters, it seems. Some of the scientists have had as checkered a past as any of the League."  
  
"And their estimated time of..."  
  
"It has not been moved up from the current date, Mrs. Pitt, I am sorry."   
  
Charlotte settled back into her chair with the not-unexpected feeling of loneliness and resignation. For a little while there was silence; no one seemed willing to take up a conversation in light of such gloomy goings-on in the house. Mycroft looked from face to quiet face, evaluating, guessing.   
  
"How are the young ones?" he asked finally, and there was a slight collective sigh.  
  
"No better. No worse, but no better..." Mina looked frustrated at her inability to alleviate their situation, her inability to offer any sort of comfort or help. "The nightmares continue, Marie doesn't eat, Gordie has his poetry, and if a day goes by without either of them bursting into tears at some point it will be a miracle."  
  
"Their nerves are stressed," Orlando softened Mina's words, perhaps harsher than the woman had meant. "Quite likely they never expected to deal with these kidnappers again, and now they are struck with the fear that they might have to, or that they might have to recount what has happened to them."  
  
"And there is still no reason we can discover for why they would be afraid to speak of it... at least, why they think that speaking of the attackers might bring them down on the orphanage." Charlotte looked to the others for confirmation, being as she was not very well versed in the extraordinary herself.  
  
Mina shook her head. "I can't for the life of me figure that part of it out. There's no sense behind it... even ... even if they were being given some sort of mental command, there is no way it could stretch from Paris to here. No human being... even a vampire doesn't have that kind of strength."  
  
"No human being or creature that you know of," Mycroft corrected. "Remember your own results. These creatures are not entirely human, nor of the Neanderthal or Cro Magnon line. They are nothing you have experienced before, and perhaps they have abilities you are not aware of."  
  
Mina sighed, nodding. "They'd have to, in order to be able to cause this much chaos."  
  
"You know, that's another thing I don't understand." Orlando leaned forward, drawing pictures in the air with slim and tapered fingers as though it would somehow make her understanding clearer. "Why children? Why are all of the victims of these abductions children? And more girls than boys, have you noticed that? There has to be some sort of underlying reason..."  
  
"I had noticed that, yes." Mycroft finished his drink, set the tumbler down on the end table, and frowned thoughtfully. "I had not as yet come up with a theory that would account for the manner and choice of abductions, though. Perhaps girls are more pliable than boys."  
  
The three women exchanged a glance and a chuckle.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Dear Mycroft..." Orlando smiled and patted his hand. "It is nothing, except that it is quite clear that you've never had or been a girl yourself."  
  
"Hmmph," he muttered good-naturedly. "It's just as I've always said... women are irrational..."  
  
There was most likely more to that prepared and comic diatribe, but he never got a chance to impart it. A commotion and a screaming came from upstairs, and in a few seconds Marie came flying into the room.  
  
"They're coming!" She would have been shrieking except that she was trying not to be heard. "They're coming... Mina-mama, they're coming..." She flew into the vampiress's arms. Mina's eyes were already starting to change, knowing what had happened last time Marie had said that.  
  
"Who's coming, Marie..." Charlotte asked. Orlando, Mina, and Mycroft exchanged looks of alarm... Charlotte had not been present the last time, and she was a most ordinary woman. If she were caught in the line of fire...  
  
"Charlotte..." Mycroft started to say, and paused while Gordie came crashing into the room as fast as he could, still slower than Marie on his twisted leg. "Perhaps you had better stay inside, upstairs with the children. They'll be wondering what's been going on if they wake up due to the commotion, and most likely scared."  
  
Charlotte looked around the room at the carefully blank faces and the two younger folk sobbing hysterically in various sets of arms. "Mr. Holmes, I don't like being managed..."  
  
"And you will not be managed, dear lady," Mycroft said as placatingly as he could. "But the fact remains that you are... well, to put it quite honestly, ordinary. You have no defenses such as Orlando and Mina have, and if this building should come under attack you will be defenseless. And it would be easier for the rest of us if all such folk were in the same area."  
  
"Attack?" Charlotte's eyes widened. "Do you really think it will come to..."  
  
As though perfectly on cue, there was a high-pitched shriek.   
  
Everyone sat in their chairs for the briefest of seconds that seemed to spin out into an hour, frozen. Even Marie and Gordie were utterly quiet, the whites of their eyes showing their animalistic fear. Then the second scream came, a different voice this time, and jolted everyone to action. Charlotte practically fled upstairs, already hearing the sound of children stirring. Orlando took Marie from Mina and herded both children into the corner by the fire. Mycroft picked up the decanter and an iron poker and quickly joined them.  
  
Mina's eyes bled crimson, and it wasn't entirely clear whether she was stalking or floating towards the door.  
  
"Stay in the corner," Mycroft said, rather unnecessarily but it seemed to give him some sort of feeling of control over the whole situation. Neither Orlando nor the youngers made any comment on it.  
  
"I will take care of it," Mina replied, and her voice had already sharpened to a growl, a snarl that seemed to tear itself from her throat. Mycroft and Orlando's eyes widened slightly at the display of power; Gordie and Marie, for some peculiar reason, looked... relieved?  
  
There was a pounding on the door. There was shrieking outside, the words themselves obstructed by the two layers of thick oak. Marie, however, pulled away from Orlando. "It's Artie!" she yelped, sounding startled. "It's Artie and Claire and John..."  
  
The words could faintly be made out now as the three outside raised their voices, and as Mina and Mycroft now knew what to listen for. "Let us in! Let us in! Let us in!"   
  
Marie didn't even wait for Mina, but ran to the doors and started pulling open both oak and gate, leaving them sprawling open behind her. Mina followed, eyes still blood red and mind still afire with the vampire's lust for blood. When Marie opened the outer door, three wet and bedraggled young men and women practically collapsed into her arms.   
  
"Get them back into the room," Mina growled. "Orlando!"  
  
"What happened?" The other woman came at a run, helping Marie to half drag, half carry the three bedraggled and soaked arrivals. "I didn't think it was raining outside."  
  
"It's not," Marie said cryptically. "Get them in... we have to get them in, before..."  
  
The low growl, not an animal sound but not human either, galvanized them all into action. Mina shouted a single word that might have been 'Go' or 'Run', no one could be sure. Orlando and Marie sped up as best they could, pulling the gate shut behind them, and then the solid inner oak door.   
  
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Outside the orphanage Mina could allow her mind to be subsumed by the fierce hunger of her vampire blood. Outside the orphanage, with the newest three locked safe inside the triple doors, she could attack anything in sight and be certain it was an enemy. And attack she did, with a fury born of primal protective instinct.  
  
There was no telling what these creatures were, she noted with the distant and much imprisoned part of her mind that could still think rationally. She analyzed and calculated even as she ravaged and fed, and was ravaged upon herself. The first wave (if three or four could be called a wave) came upon her so suddenly that they must have felt assured in their superiority of strength and numbers. She taught them otherwise, and quickly. The second wave hung back after she had four bodies piled around her, watching with a little more caution to see what this strange new creature would do. She had a little bit of time to calm herself, to regain control and examine the situation.   
  
Man-apes indeed, she thought with a frown. These creatures resembled human beings in that they were bipedal and had the right number of limbs, digits, and opposable thumbs. But their faces, their grayish bodies and their white eyes... these were hideous and different. Their talons, which had raked her without effect, seemed to be secreting some sort of strange... she didn't know what to call it. It was so different here from in the lab.  
  
The second wave advanced, of course, as soon as they sensed her attention wandering. Her gaze snapped back up to the living monsters instead of the dead ones, and the fight was on again.   
  
This time there were some changes. She could hear the crack of pistol fire and see the muzzle of a rifle poking from the window out of the corner of her eye. Mycroft, at least, she knew. She didn't know who the pistol had been. Her teeth sank into the veins of one of the creatures. Ironically the thought struck her that if she didn't watch herself she was going to be lethargic and slow from the sheer amount of blood she was consuming.   
  
As it turned out, she didn't need to worry. Between the support fire, her own abilities, and the sound of constables running up the street and whistling for all they were worth, the area was clear of the strange creatures almost faster than she had time to think. Mina composed herself quickly, retreating up to the steps of the townhouse and scrubbing at her face to make sure all traces of blood were lost, or at least shifted into a position to where it could be accounted for by the violence.  
  
"Miss..." one of the constables ran up to her while the others clustered around the corpses, looking for all the world as though Martians had descended from the sky to attack. And maybe, Mina thought wearily, they have.   
  
"I'm all right," she waved them off. "I'm all right. This..." Damn. The biggest problem, she decided then, with being a member of the British Secret Service (or a branch therein) was that it was secret. "Is a matter of international security. Your timeliness is appreciated but your services are not required any longer, thank you... sir!" Dammit. They were poking around at the bodies. "Sir, those are evidence, would you please step away."  
  
"It's all right." Mycroft. His voice, though occasionally heralding the onset of obnoxious male patronizing attitude, was a welcome sound to Mina's ears in the current situation. "It's all right, gentlemen. You've performed your duty admirably, but it's time for the rest of us to take over..."   
  
Thank God, Mina murmured, retreating further into the now-open doorway as Mycroft explained to the nice gentlemen very carefully, in the strange words of the law enforcement language, that they should kindly bugger off right now. Orlando, Charlotte, and Marie (to Mina's surprise) appeared in the doorway shortly after they'd left. It had been Marie who had fired the pistol, and Mina had no idea where she'd picked up that skill.  
  
"Rodney," Marie said shyly as they started to heave the bodies through the house and into the cellar, which was the best place everyone could think of to put them for now. "He thought it might help me to feel safer if I learned how to shoot a pistol, so he taught me to shoot at pieces of wood. Didn't help. But..."   
  
"Well, it helped tonight," Mina dumped her side of the body onto the floor, with Orlando following suit, and went over to wrap Marie up in a heartfelt and grateful embrace. "You did brilliantly." 


End file.
